Chapter 7: A brief story of a one-sided friendship, part 3
By the time Shin reached the nearest men's bathroom, he felt almost calm. Tetsu had her motives, but her support was genuine. Shin didn't think that, as close as they were, they could show false emotions to each other.
Murai paused at the entrance to the bathroom, but after a glance at the empty hallway around, said, "I want to do the thing, too," and followed Shin inside.
'I didn't even have to TRY to lure him here,' Shin thought, looking around the bathroom and contemplating his next actions.
The place was one of the worst examples of a school bathroom. White tiles that covered floors and walls were covered in dozens of graffiti and weird spots. The floors were slightly and suspiciously wet. The mirror above a lone sink was cracked, and Shin was sure there wasn't a single strap of toilet paper anywhere.
'This place stinks,' Tetsu echoed Shin's thoughts. 'I will kill our prey quickly so we can leave it soon, partner.'
'Wait a moment.'
Now that Shin was here, he felt like taking a leak. It would make Murai less suspicious, too.
He went to the cleaner of the two urinals and began to unzip. With the corner of his eye, Shin saw Murai going into a stall and closing the door behind him.
Something moved in the urinal. Shin froze.
'Did you see it, Tetsu?' he asked, backing away from the urinal. He wasn't paranoid—he KNEW what kinds of things could be inside the pipes.
And there was definitely something inside the drain. Something glistening…
'Boss? Do you mean?..'
The thing burst out in a geyser of yellowish sludge. Tetsu phased out of his body with her claws ready to fight, but Shin jumped away before the sludge splattered him. He saw similar geysers appearing from the drain in the other urinal and in the sink.
"YIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAIIIIIII!!" Murai shrieked, jumping out of his stall. He was holding his pants with his hands, and his own demon was jutting out of his back.
Yellowish-gray sludge was following him.
"W-what the FUCK is this?!" Murai asked, putting his pants on with shaking hands.
"A toilet slime," Shin replied, scowling.
What was with his rotten luck? First a skin-snatcher, now a toilet slime… It wasn't like either could be affected by the Fourth. The toilet slime was almost mindless!
And it DID live in a school toilet, but Shin was almost certain that it was not in the same school as the protagonist of the skin-snatcher story. Not at the same time, at least. He didn't name every school in his stories, so he couldn't be sure.
His stories almost never crossed over like that.
"We have to run!" Murai shouted. He turned towards the exit, but paused after taking a single step. "Oh, damn."
Most of the sludge had already gathered into a single misshapen creature. Its wide mouth and enormous eyes resembled an extremely ugly toad, whose head almost reached the ceiling. Its body completely hid the exit door behind it.
Tetsu kept standing between the monster and Shin, tensed and primed for battle. Her 'armor' rippled, and small, but sharp spikes appeared all over it.
"It's faster than it looks, and it doesn't seem to have any vulnerable spots," Tetsu said. "Is it acidic?"
Shin was surprised. The cold and fierce way she spoke was a complete change from her usual bubbly demeanor. And the way Tetsu analyzed the situation showed she was smarter than she appeared before, too.
"Not very much," Shin replied. "It swallows victims alive and suffocates them. But if we beat it hard enough, it will flee where it came from. Fire will be especially useful, Murai's demon."
The red-eyed demon grinned. Murai gasped and turned around to look at it.
"When did you get out…? Anyway, you heard Kugutsu-san! Make that thing go away! That's an order!"
The demon chuckled unpleasantly and nodded, before leaving Murai fully.
Its lower half was closer to that of a bird, with a pair of clawed hands and a feathered—but still long and thin—tail. Symbols of the demon's name were faintly visible on the feathers.
Shin counted a single Verse—the same level that Tetsu could use in her current state. Just like he suspected.
The demon raised its clawed hands, and fist-sized balls of fire appeared in them. It raised them upwards proudly and, with a flourish, threw the fireballs in the toilet slime toad.
They hit its surface and sizzled out in a burst of stinky steam. The toad quivered silently and hopped closer to the humans. The fire demon flinched away.
"D-damn, this is useless! You are useless!" Murai shouted, pinching his nose against the smell. "It's going to swallow us!"
"No one swallows MY boss!" Tetsu snarled.
While Murai's demon was attacking, she grabbed one of the pipes running along the walls and tore out an entire section. Now she charged at the slime toad, swinging the pipe like a club.
The powerful blow splashed slime everywhere. Shin felt the sting of Tetsu's pain where chunks landed on her armor, but she ignored it.
"Die! Die, die, die!" she shouted, slamming her pipe with each attack. Her anger wasn't cold at all anymore.
And Tetsu was so focused on the attack that she didn't see at all how the toad grew a long tail and primed it for a counterattack.
Shin reached into the pocket of his school uniform and pulled out a knife that had already killed one monster.
"Look out, Tetsu!"
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone