Luminescent

Meet the Parents

"Oi! Wake up, clown bastard!" A familiar voice grouched. Mephisto knew that voice, but why did it seem wrong for him to hear it?

"Shiro, let them be, they look happy." Another voice that he thought he'd never hear again chided.

"God damnit, why are you such a nuisance? Wake up already!" The first voice growled again and Mephisto gave a sigh and peeked an eye open. It took him a second to register who was glaring down at him and who was standing next to him before he sat straight up and stared at the nearly see-through man glowering at him with his arms crossed. A woman stood next to him, shaking her head. Then, Rin stood next to her, taller than both of the spirits.

Amaimon grumbled about Mephisto's sudden movement disturbing his nap and sat up too, yawning. When he saw the ghosts and Rin, he sat there for a moment before leaning forward and attempting to shred the man from his face to his stomach with deadly claws and a vicious growl ripping from his throat. It would've worked if the man had a solid body.

"The only time it's good to be dead." The man sighed. Both the woman and Rin giggled and sounded nearly identical.

"Shiro? Where did you even come from, dear friend?" Mephisto was utterly befuddled. "Hell." The man answered bluntly. "You've been living in the castle this whole time, what are you so grumpy about?" Rin rolled his eyes. He was back to his original body and wearing something that was obviously Tartarus' doing, because the outfit was all dark colors. Though, he never would have thought the entity had a thing for fishnet. Or exposure.

Mephisto threw the Earth King a dirty look and stood up, brushing nonexistent dust off his clothes and looking down at Shiro with a grin. "I thought I'd never be able to see you again. That is, see you as you used to be. You look good Shiro." The man seemed to be caught off guard by the comment and frowned.

"Why are you suddenly so nice to me now?" He asked suspiciously. Mephisto grimaced. "Rin's had a bad run in Assiah until a few months ago. You weren't an ideal father figure, but I made you raise the twins anyway and they're both horribly scarred now. If I'd looked a little further into things I stead of leaving them to go without my further intervention to see what happened, I would've noticed something I really shouldn't have missed." The demon sighed.

"Do tell." Shiro said, intrested to hear about Mephisto's mistakes. He gave the man a baleful look and sat down on the couch. "Something I never thought of was how Satan formed when all that was possessing Goro was some tiny little piece of a soul. How could Satan possibly form from that? I thought that same little piece had just gained more power the longer it possessed Goro over the years. That's not what happened though." Amaimon was finally done laughing in Shiro's face over his predicament of being dead and useless and sat down next to the Time Lord on the couch.

"When we went to Section 13 not too long ago, Rin said he remembered being in a tank just like the ones I preserved. It was only then that I realized that what Rin is and what Satan is are two completely different things. Rin isn't a piece of Satan that separated form him when he impregnated Yuri Egin. Satan was a malevolent spirit that began as a will-o'-wisp and slowly gained more sentience as it observed humans. It possessed Goro along with that little nobody of Goro's malnourished and malformed soul and tried to absorb it for more power. But Goro didn't want to be part of something else and in revenge, caused Satan's emotional instability as he gained an Ego. When Satan and Yuri made Rin and Yukio, that piece escaped and merged with baby Rin's soul. So, in conclusion, Rin's flames really are his own and no one else's." Mephisto finished this explanation. "And, Goro was there first, so that also means Rin was first. So technically, Rin is older than Satan? Man, that's a story! And really weird, because I raised him." Shiro admitted. A snort from Amaimon drew his gaze to the demon. "Don't toot a horn that doesn't exist, Priest. You didn't raise shit. You trained one to be a killing machine and totally neglected the other for most of their lives." His face relaxed. "But it's this guy's fault, and Humans aren't perfect, so you get a break for once, congratulations." He poked Mephisto's cheek merely to annoy him in retribution for letting things get so bad.