LOCATION: Gulf of Mexico — 233 miles offshore
DATE: March 17, 1963
PARTICIPANTS:
-
Talloran (#8): 2500-meter Mechazord Lizard God. Continental deterrent. Very fucking annoyed.
-
Devilman (Unranked): 8'10" of "hold my beer."
DURATION: 6 hours, 14 minutes
RESULT: Devilman promoted to #6. Talloran requests "no further contact."
04:47 AM — Departure
The speedboat was stolen.
Not that Devilman stole it. Devilman doesn't steal. Devilman requisitioned it from a Cartel safehouse in Corpus Christi, which is a fancy way of saying he kicked the door down, knocked out the three guards, and took the keys from a man who was actively soiling himself.
The boat's name, painted in fading cursive on the hull: "Sea Bitch."
Devilman looked at it. Didn't comment. Dropped his duffel bag on the passenger seat.
Inside the duffel:
-
1 prototype mecha suit (USCT Experimental, "borrowed" without paperwork)
-
14 RPG-7 rounds
-
3 electrical overdrive bombs
-
2 laser emitters
-
1 minor explosive device (purpose: unknown to everyone except Devilman)
-
4 MREs
-
1 thermos of black coffee
Dave stood on the dock, chains smoking, face unreadable behind his mask.
"You're actually doing this."
Devilman gunned the engine.
"Coffee's in the thermos."
"That's not— I don't want—"
"It's good coffee."
The Sea Bitch roared away from the dock.
Dave watched until the wake disappeared into the grey Gulf dawn.
"...what the fuck."
05:00 AM — 17:00 PM — The Crossing
465 miles.
12 hours.
One man. One boat. One thermos of coffee. Zero Catalyst.
The Gulf of Mexico is 600,000 square miles of open water. It does not care about you. It does not care about your mission. It does not care that you are about to fight a 2500-meter dragon god.
It will slap you with waves. It will bake you with sun. It will fill your lungs with salt and your soul with the crushing, infinite loneliness of being the only speck of life in a blue eternity.
Devilman drank his coffee.
Adjusted the throttle.
Stared at the horizon.
Did not blink for six hours.
Why?
Nobody asked. Nobody dared.
But if they had, he might have said:
"Talloran sleeps. He dreams. He doesn't fight anymore. He just... exists. A deterrent. A threat. A mountain that breathes."
"But mountains don't save people. Mountains don't catch falling buildings. Mountains don't look at a child in the Grey Zone and say 'I'll carry you.'"
"I'm not a mountain."
"I'm a man."
"And men don't sleep when there's work to do."
17:23 PM — Gulf of Mexico, Central Zone
The minor explosive was, objectively, very minor.
About the size of a soda can. Yield equivalent to two sticks of dynamite. Devilman primed it, checked the timer, and dropped it over the side.
It sank.
10 feet. 50. 100.
BOOM.
A column of water shot 40 feet into the air. Fish died. Seagulls scattered. The Sea Bitch rocked gently in the expanding ripples.
For a moment, nothing.
Then:
Silence.
Not the normal silence of open ocean. A deeper silence. The silence of something waking up that should have stayed asleep.
The water began to move.
Not waves. Not currents.
Displacement.
17:24 PM
Two and a half kilometers of engineered nightmare rose from the Gulf of Mexico.
Talloran's head broke the surface first—a cathedral of obsidian alloy and ancient, glowing optics. Then his shoulders, each one the size of an aircraft carrier. Then his chest, a fortress of interlocking plates forged in the Earth's mantle. Then his arms, each one capable of reshaping coastlines.
Water cascaded off his frame in artificial waterfalls. Steam hissed where his internal plasma reactor met cold seawater. His tail—400,000 tons of kinetic death—uncoiled behind him, sending waves toward Texas.
His great, glacier-slow eye found the speedboat.
Found the speck standing on it.
Found Devilman, arms crossed, mecha suit half-unzipped, coffee thermos in hand.
A sound emerged from Talloran's throat.
Not a roar.
Not a battle cry.
A sound of profound, ancient annoyance.
"...you."
17:25 PM
Talloran did not negotiate.
Talloran did not issue warnings.
Talloran responded.
His dorsal plates split open. Missile batteries—designed for anti-fleet warfare, for coastal bombardment, for the complete annihilation of anything stupid enough to threaten continental security—unfolded.
72 concurrent launch cells.
Target: One speedboat.
Yield: Enough to turn a city block into a crater.
Devilman's response:
"Finally."
He zipped up his mecha suit.
17:26 PM — First Salvo
The sky turned white.
72 missiles streaked across the water—not in a wave, but in a cone, converging on the Sea Bitch with surgical precision. Each warhead was capable of penetrating 30 feet of reinforced concrete. Together, they could have sunk a battleship.
Devilman's mecha suit ignited.
Not flight—launch. Twin boosters screamed to life, hurling him off the boat's deck at Mach 1.4. The Sea Bitch, abandoned to its fate, ceased to exist 0.3 seconds later in a fireball visible from the Florida coast.
Devilman didn't look back.
He was already climbing.
17:28 PM — The Evasion
The missiles didn't give up.
They tracked. Talloran's targeting systems were pre-Silence military tech, refined and enhanced by decades of USCT reverse-engineering. They could predict trajectories, calculate evasion patterns, adjust for countermeasures in milliseconds.
Devilman didn't use patterns.
He flew straight up.
Then straight down.
Then through the smoke plume of his own destroyed boat.
Then between two missile streams with 3 feet of clearance on either side.
His mecha suit screamed in protest. His human body screamed louder. G-forces that would have liquefied a normal pilot were just... Tuesday for a man who'd spent 20 years treating pain as information.
Behind him, missiles collided with each other, confused by a target that refused to follow physics.
Ahead of him: Talloran's face.
17:31 PM
Talloran raised his right hand.
This hand had, historically:
-
Crushed a Cartel mecha battalion into scrap
-
Created the Panama Bypass Canal (accidentally)
-
Held up a collapsing mountain range for 14 hours while civilians evacuated
-
Killed exactly one thing that deserved it (classified)
It was roughly the size of a New York City block.
It descended toward Devilman like the fucking hand of God.
17:31:03 PM
Devilman didn't dodge.
Didn't evade.
Didn't even slow down.
He accelerated.
The mecha suit's boosters flared white-hot. His trajectory shifted from "evasive" to "terminal."
17:31:05 PM
Hand met man.
The impact didn't make a sound. It made a shockwave. A ring of compressed air expanded at Mach speed, flattening the ocean surface in a perfect circle for three miles in every direction.
Devilman was driven into the water at velocity that should have turned him into soup.
He went through the surface like a bullet through skin.
50 feet.
100.
200.
500.
800.
1000 feet.
He hit the seafloor.
17:32 PM — The Crater
The Gulf of Mexico, at that location, is approximately 1,200 feet deep.
Devilman created a new topographic feature: a 1000-foot-deep impact crater in the continental shelf.
Sediment plumed upward in a brown cloud. Pressure waves killed every fish within a half-mile radius. Seismographs in Houston registered a 4.2 magnitude event.
Talloran's hand remained pressed into the ocean, pinning his opponent to the seafloor with enough force to compress sedimentary rock into shale.
The dragon god waited.
Silence.
...good, his ancient consciousness murmured. It is done.
Then the hand moved.
17:33 PM
Not because Talloran lifted it.
Because something pushed it up from below.
The hand rose—slowly, incrementally, against the full mechanical advantage of a 2500-meter war machine. Water churned. Sediment swirled. The seafloor cracked.
And Devilman stood up from his own grave.
His mecha suit was ruined. The left arm was gone entirely—sheared off at the shoulder. The chest plate was caved in. One boot thruster was sparking and dead. His faceplate was spiderwebbed with fractures, blood leaking through the cracks.
His right arm was raised, palm up, holding several million tons of dragon god's hand like it was a particularly heavy barbell.
He looked up through 1000 feet of murky water.
"That all you got?"
17:34 PM — 21:00 PM
Talloran sank.
Not from damage. Not from strategy. From incredulity.
This creature—this speck—had just pushed his hand off the ocean floor. Had just insulted him. Had just survived a blow that should have turned him into atoms.
Talloran needed to understand.
So he descended.
The dragon god sank into the Gulf, his massive form displacing enough water to create a temporary whirlpool. His tail wrapped around submerged mountain ranges for leverage. His claws dug into the continental shelf.
And he fought.
Phase 1: The Grapple
Talloran's left hand swept through the water like a dredging net.
Devilman dodged—not with speed, but with anticipation. He'd spent 20 years fighting things bigger than him. You don't outrun them. You don't overpower them.
You make them miss.
The hand closed on empty water. Devilman swam through the gap between Taloran's index and middle fingers, his ruined mecha suit sparking, his breath held for the 47th consecutive minute.
Phase 2: The Electrical Overdrive Bomb
Devilman's right hand found the detonator.
The bomb wasn't standard USCT issue. It was Coby Vigor's prototype—stolen, modified, and calibrated specifically for one target. Talloran's mechanical systems operated on a hybrid bio-synthetic neural network. The Overdrive bomb didn't damage it.
It confused it.
A pulse of scrambled electrical signals rippled through Talloran's dorsal fin. The dragon's massive body stuttered. His optics flickered. His limbs lost coordination for exactly 2.7 seconds.
It was enough.
Phase 3: The Laser Beam
Devilman's mecha suit had two laser emitters.
One was already destroyed.
The other had exactly one shot remaining.
He aimed at the seam between Talloran's neck and shoulder plates—a vulnerability identified from 14 months of analyzing satellite footage, engineering schematics, and scraps of pre-Silence technical documents.
FIRE.
The laser punched through 12 feet of obsidian alloy, super-dense ceramic, and bio-synthetic muscle fiber. It didn't hit anything vital.
But it hurt.
Talloran roared. The sound traveled through water, through earth, through the very crust of the planet. Every Catalyst on the North American continent felt it.
Phase 4: The RPG Barrage
Devilman had 14 RPGs.
He fired all of them.
Not at Talloran's face. Not at his chest. At his joints. Knees. Elbows. The base of his tail. The hinge of his jaw.
Each impact was a mosquito bite. Individually meaningless. Collectively enraging.
The dragon god thrashed. Submarine canyons were reshaped. The Gulf of Mexico experienced its first artificial tsunami warning in history.
And Devilman kept firing.
Six hours.
Six hours of a man with no powers, in a broken suit, at the bottom of the ocean, fighting a god.
Six hours of dodging claws the size of buildings.
Six hours of detonating explosives against armor that had survived the Earth's mantle.
Six hours of not dying.
Talloran's great eye—damaged, flickering, leaking hydraulic fluid—fixed on the speck before him.
The dragon god was tired.
Not physically. Talloran did not tire. His reactor could burn for centuries.
He was tired of this.
This creature. This insect. This impossible, indestructible, absolutely infuriating mammal who refused to stay crushed, refused to stay drowned, refused to stay dead.
A thought formed in Talloran's ancient consciousness:
...it's not going to stop.
It's never going to stop.
What do I do with something that won't stop?
The answer arrived, unbidden, unwelcome:
...respect it.
21:14 PM
Talloran rose.
Not in attack. Not in retreat.
He rose to the surface, his massive frame breaching the Gulf like a volcanic island being born. Water cascaded off his shoulders. Steam rose from his wounded joints.
Devilman surfaced a hundred yards away, clinging to a piece of debris from the Sea Bitch. His mecha suit was non-functional. His left arm was gone. His face was visible through the shattered faceplate—bleeding, exhausted, utterly calm.
Talloran looked at him.
Devilman looked back.
"...why?" The dragon's voice was a geological event. "Why do this?"
Devilman coughed seawater. Spit blood.
"You're #8."
"Yes."
"I'm not ranked."
"...yes."
"Seemed unfair."
Talloran was silent for a long, long moment.
Then:
"...you are insane."
Devilman almost smiled.
"Probably."
03:00 AM — USHC Headquarters
The emergency Council session was, technically, illegal.
No quorum. No prior notice. No adherence to any of the 47 protocols governing extraordinary meetings of the Protectorate.
But when a 2500-meter dragon god sends a priority-1 transmission directly to Council chambers, you answer the fucking phone.
Talloran's voice, via encrypted tectonic relay:
"Promote him."
Lifeblood: "...excuse me?"
"The human. Devilman. Promote him."
Fonikó: "...to what rank?"
A pause. The kind of pause that shifts tectonic plates.
"Six."
The White Stag: "Six?! That's— he's not— we have established hierarchies, you can't just—"
"I just fought him for six hours."
Silence.
"I am 2500 meters tall. I have weapons that can crack the continental crust. My reactor output is measured in gigawatts."
Longer silence.
"He punched me in the face. With his fist. While underwater. After I hit him with my full striking force."
"...and he asked if that was 'all I got.'"
The Council stared at the relay.
"Promote him to six. Or I will surface and discuss this in person."
Vote: Unanimous.
Devilman lay on the operating table.
His left arm was a memory. His ribs were a jigsaw puzzle missing several pieces. His mecha suit was being studied by engineers who kept muttering "this shouldn't work" and "how did he survive this" and "what the fuck is this component even supposed to do."
Lady Death sat beside him.
She didn't speak. Didn't touch him. Didn't need to.
After a long silence, Devilman opened his eyes.
"Six."
"Yes."
"Talloran wanted me at six."
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
"Yes."
A pause.
"He's not so bad. Just... big."
Lady Death's expression didn't change. But her hand—the hand that had ended 847 lives with surgical precision—moved to rest on his.
"You're an idiot."
"Probably."
"...don't do it again."
Devilman looked at her. Through the blood. Through the exhaustion. Through the 1000-foot crater he'd carved into the seafloor with his own body.
"Can't promise that."
She squeezed his hand.
"...I know."
END SCENE
Devilman's official promotion to #6 was recorded at 04:23 AM, March 18, 1963.
Talloran returned to dormancy at 05:00 AM. His final transmission before entering low-power mode:
"Do not wake me for anything less than continental extinction."
Addendum, handwritten at the bottom of the file:
"...or him. Do not wake me for him either. Especially not him."
— Fonikó Desukurō, Council Secretary
The Gulf of Mexico still bears the scar.
They call it Devilman's Crater.
1000 feet deep. 2 miles wide.
A permanent reminder that sometimes, gods fight men.
And sometimes, men win.
DEVILMAN VS. HELLSING & LADY DEATH — THE 2V1 THAT SHOOK THE COUNCIL
LOCATION: USCT Training Ground Omega — "The Crucible"
DATE: November 12, 1964
PARTICIPANTS:
-
Devilman (#6): No Catalyst. Mecha suit. 8'10" of "come get some."
-
Hellsing (#7): The Armory. Organic weapons. Still intact (pre-Yohiko).
-
Lady Death (#9): Absolute Precision. Timeline erasure. Devilman's wife.
CONTEXT: Mandatory cross-rank sparring. "Friendly" exercise.
RESULT: Two heroes hospitalized. Devilman walked out.
AFTERMATH: The nickname "The Machine Hero" was born.
"This is a terrible fucking idea."
Dave's chains were sparking. Not from combat readiness—from anxiety. He stood in the observation deck, watching the three figures enter the Crucible's blasted landscape.
Coby Vigor, beside him, didn't look up from his datapad.
"The Council approved it."
"The Council is full of idiots who've never been in the same room as Devilman when he's actually trying."
"...correct."
Coby's fingers hovered over the vitals feed.
"This will be educational."
"This will be a mass casualty event."
On the field:
Hellsing rolled his shoulders. His right forearm—still functional, still deadly—hummed with the familiar vibration of organic chainsaw teeth. His left hand extruded three bone spikes between his knuckles, ready to launch.
"You sure about this?"
Lady Death didn't answer.
She was already in position. 800 meters away, perched on a collapsed industrial smokestack, her rifle—a custom USCT anti-Catalyst platform—trained on her husband's center mass.
Her breathing was steady.
Her aim was perfect.
Her expression was unreadable.
"...you're actually going to shoot him."
"He asked me to."
"He asked you to shoot him?"
"He said, and I quote: 'Don't hold back. I won't.'"
Hellsing stared at her.
"...you two have a really fucked up marriage."
Lady Death's finger tightened on the trigger.
"Yes."
"We do."
T-0:00
The horn sounded.
T-0:00.5
Lady Death fired.
The round was not normal ammunition. It was a Mark VII Timeline Erasure Slug—a bullet that didn't kill you so much as convince the universe you'd never existed in the first place. Lady Death had used it exactly 47 times in her career.
Zero survivors.
T-0:00.7
Devilman moved.
Not dodged. Not weaved. Moved. His mecha suit's predictive targeting system—a pre-Silence prototype he'd "requisitioned" and personally maintained for 12 years—calculated trajectory, velocity, and atmospheric interference in 14 milliseconds.
His head tilted 3.7 degrees to the left.
The slug passed through the space where his skull had been.
T-0:01
"What the fuck."
Lady Death's voice was flat. Not surprised. Confused.
The bullet had never missed.
T-0:01.5
Hellsing closed distance.
His chainsaw arm roared to life—8,000 RPM of compressed hydroxyapatite teeth, driven by modified muscle fiber, lubricated by his own synovial fluid. The blade screamed through the air, aimed at Devilman's shoulder.
T-0:02
Devilman caught it.
Not blocked. Not deflected.
Caught.
His mecha suit's gauntlet—reinforced titanium-carbide weave, hydraulic dampeners, custom-fabricated in his personal workshop—closed around the spinning blade.
Teeth shattered.
Sparks rained.
The chainsaw screamed in protest, then died.
Hellsing stared at the stump of his forearm. The blade was fused. The drive mechanism was seized. Smoke rose from the seam where organic weapon met human flesh.
"...what."
T-0:03
Devilman's fist met Hellsing's chest plate.
Not a punch. A statement.
The armor—rated for anti-materiel rifle fire—caved. Hellsing left the ground at 45 degrees, traveled 30 meters, and impacted a concrete barrier with enough force to leave a man-shaped crater.
His vitals flickered. Consciousness: Fading.
3 seconds.
Two heroes neutralized.
Zero Catalyst used.
T-0:04 — 1:30
Lady Death did not panic.
She was #9. She had ended 847 lives with surgical precision. She had killed men who could control time, women who could reshape reality, creatures that had never been human.
She had never fought Devilman.
Not like this.
Phase 1: Teleportation
She blinked—light-speed repositioning, her Catalyst bending space to deposit her 40 meters to Devilman's left. Rifle raised. Sight picture acquired. Trigger—
He was already there.
Not teleporting. Not super-speed. Anticipation. He had read her pattern in 1.7 seconds of observation and moved to intercept before she even completed the jump.
Her shot went wide.
Phase 2: Volume of Fire
She emptied the magazine. 14 rounds. Each one a conceptual weapon—pain delivery, timeline erasure, localized reality deletion.
Devilman moved through them like water through rocks.
Not dodging.
Threading.
His mecha suit's thrusters fired in micro-bursts—adjusting trajectory by centimeters, shifting center of mass by degrees. Each round passed within inches of his flesh.
None touched him.
Phase 3: Emotional Warfare
Lady Death was not emotional.
She was the endpoint. The final answer. She had killed her own mentor when he went rogue. She had executed friends who became threats. She had never hesitated.
But this was her husband.
This was the man who looked at her—at her Catalyst, at her reputation, at the 847 confirmed kills in her file—and said:
"You're not what they say you are."
And he was right.
And now she was trying to erase him from existence.
Her hands shook.
T-1:31
Devilman stood before her.
Not attacking. Not advancing. Just... present.
His faceplate was cracked. His left gauntlet was sparking. His breathing was steady.
"You're hesitating."
"...yes."
"Don't."
"I—"
"Don't."
She raised the rifle.
Her finger found the trigger.
She looked at his face—what she could see of it through the fractured ceramic.
"...I can't."
Devilman nodded.
Then he moved.
T-1:32
The rifle left her hands in three pieces.
Not destroyed. Disassembled. Devilman's gauntlets moved faster than her eyes could track—releasing catches, removing magazines, separating stock from barrel. The weapon was rendered inert in 1.2 seconds.
Lady Death stood unarmed for the first time in 20 years.
Devilman looked at her.
"Good fight."
He turned and walked away.
T-2:00 — Medical Bay
Hellsing's chest was a topographic map of fractures.
Three ribs. Sternum. Left clavicle. The chainsaw arm was non-functional—the blade fused, the drive mechanism seized, the organic components entering rapid necrosis.
"He caught it," Hellsing wheezed. "He just... caught it. With his hand."
The medics exchanged glances.
"Sir, his gauntlet was reinforced titanium-carbide—"
"I DON'T CARE WHAT IT WAS MADE OF. HE CAUGHT MY CHAINSAW. WITH HIS FIST. AND THEN HE PUNCHED ME THROUGH A WALL."
"...yes sir."
"THAT'S NOT NORMAL."
"...no sir."
T-2:00 — Observation Deck
Dave's chains had gone cold.
Coby's datapad displayed the combat telemetry. His fingers hovered over the screen, frozen.
"...he dodged 14 timeline erasure rounds."
"Yes."
"In 1.3 seconds."
"Yes."
"His reaction time is 8 milliseconds."
"...yes."
Silence.
"That's faster than a pre-Silence fighter jet's targeting computer."
"Yes."
"He's human."
"...yes."
Longer silence.
"...what the fuck."
T-3:00 — Council Chambers (Emergency Session)
Lifeblood: "He defeated two ranked Protectors. Simultaneously. Without a Catalyst."
Fonikó: "...yes."
The White Stag: "Lady Death didn't even land a hit."
Fonikó: "...no."
Mr. Homicidal: "I could make him afraid. I could find whatever's in his head and—"
Fonikó: "No. "
Mr. Homicidal: [actually shuts up]
Lifeblood: "What do we do with him?"
Fonikó: "Nothing."
The White Stag: "Nothing? He just proved he can defeat half the Council in direct combat."
Fonikó: "And? What would you propose? Demotion? Discipline?"
Silence.
Fonikó: "He followed the rules of engagement. He used non-lethal force. He disabled, not killed. He demonstrated tactical superiority, strategic patience, and absolute control."
Lifeblood: "...so we just... let him keep being #6?"
Fonikó: "He is #6 because he chooses to be #6. If he wanted #1, he would take it."
Longer silence.
Fonikó: "Be grateful he doesn't want it."
The next day, the USCT news network ran the story.
Not the official report—that was classified. But cadets talk. Medics talk. Maintenance staff who had to repair a man-shaped crater in Training Ground Omega's concrete barrier definitely talk.
The nickname started in the mess hall.
"Did you hear? Devilman smoked Hellsing and Lady Death. Two on one."
"Bullshit."
"My roommate's cousin works in medical. Hellsing's chest looks like a goddamn topographical map."
"...no Catalyst?"
"Not a spark. Just the suit."
"...what do we even call that?"
A cadet—young, wide-eyed, third-year kinetics track—looked up from his tray.
"He's a machine."
Silence.
"Not like... not like a Catalyst. Not like a power. He's just... efficient. Relentless. Calculated."
"...the Machine Hero."
"Yeah."
"The Machine Hero."
The name spread.
Not through official channels. Not through press releases or PR campaigns. It spread the way fear spreads—quietly, inexorably, through whispered conversations and wide eyes.
The Machine Hero.
Some called him "The Mechanized Destroyer."
Not because he was cruel. Not because he was brutal.
Because he was inevitable.
Like sunrise.
Like gravity.
Like a machine that had been built for one purpose and would never, ever stop fulfilling it.
T-4:00 — Devilman's Quarters
Lady Death sat on the edge of his sleeping mat.
Her rifle was in pieces on the workbench. She hadn't reassembled it yet. Didn't want to.
Devilman stood by the window, staring out at the Grey Zone. His mecha suit was in its maintenance cradle, sparking softly as diagnostic systems ran automated repairs.
"...you held back."
"Yes."
"You could have disabled me in the first second."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
Silence.
"You're my wife."
"...that's not a tactical consideration."
"It's the only one that matters."
Lady Death looked at her hands.
Hands that had ended 847 lives.
Hands that had held her son.
Hands that had touched Devilman's face, bare skin to bare skin, in the dark, when no one else was watching.
"...I couldn't do it."
"I know."
"I couldn't shoot you."
"I know."
"...is that weakness?"
Devilman turned from the window.
His face—unmasked, scarred, human—was unreadable. But his voice, when he spoke, was the softest it had ever been.
"No."
"It's not weakness."
"It's the only strength that matters."
They called him The Machine Hero.
They called him The Mechanized Destroyer.
They called him the Absence, the Null, the Screaming Void where power goes to die.
But his wife called him by his name.
And that was enough.
END SCENE
SCENE: THE MACHINE HERO'S OTHER WAR — DEVILMAN'S CRIMINOLOGY FILE
LOCATION: USCT Archives — Restricted Section 7
DATE: 1967 — 2017 (50-Year Analysis)
SUBJECT: Devilman (#6) — Personal Research Files
CLASSIFICATION: Previously Eyes Only — Council Level
CURRENT STATUS: HE WAS RIGHT THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME
1967 — Devilman's Quarters, 3:47 AM
The mecha suit hung in its maintenance cradle, diagnostic lights blinking in slow, rhythmic sequence. Freshly repaired. New gauntlets. Upgraded thrusters.
Its owner sat at a battered steel desk, reading lamp casting a single cone of yellow light over stacked papers.
Not mission reports.
Not tactical briefings.
Textbooks.
-
"The Criminal Mind: A Psychological Study" — Dr. Hervey Cleckley, 1941
-
"Forensic Science: The State of the Art" — American Academy of Forensic Sciences, 1965
-
"Homicide Investigation Techniques" — FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 1963
-
"True Crime: America's Hidden Epidemic" — Various Authors
Margins filled with handwriting. Tiny, precise script. Questions. Observations. Conclusions.
Lady Death stood in the doorway, watching.
"You've been at this for fourteen hours."
Devilman didn't look up.
"Thirty-two."
"...you need to sleep."
"Sleep is inefficient."
"Sleep is necessary."
"Necessary for people who aren't trying to solve 12,240 murders."
Silence.
Lady Death crossed the room. Looked at the papers. Looked at her husband's face—drawn, exhausted, but focused.
"...this isn't about the Cartel."
"No."
"This isn't about your missions."
"No."
"This is about—"
"This is about the bodies."
Devilman's voice was flat. Not cold. Not angry. Just... tired.
"The bodies no one found. The bodies no one looked for. The bodies that are still out there, in the forests and the deserts and the ditches, because the system is broken and no one wants to admit it."
Lady Death was silent.
"How many?"
Devilman slid a paper toward her.
"1966. United States. 12,240 homicides."
"Clearance rate?"
"90.1%."
A pause.
"...that's high."
"That's bullshit."
1967 — USCT Statistical Analysis Division
Dr. Harold Chen had worked for the USCT for nineteen years.
He had analyzed Catalyst emergence patterns. Population displacement models. Resource allocation efficiency. He had never, in his entire career, been summoned to the personal quarters of Protector #6 to discuss civilian murder rates.
Devilman stood by the window. His mecha suit was off. He was just... a man. 8'10" of exhausted, frustrated humanity.
"1966. 12,240 homicides. 90.1% clearance rate."
Dr. Chen nodded. "That's the official FBI statistic, yes."
"It's wrong."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"It's wrong. The math doesn't work."
Devilman turned. His face—scarred, tired, utterly serious—was illuminated by the reading lamp.
"12,240 homicides. 11,027 'cleared.' Except 'cleared' doesn't mean 'solved.' It means an arrest was made. It doesn't mean the right person was arrested. It doesn't mean the case went to trial. It doesn't mean there was a conviction."
Dr. Chen opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"...that's... technically correct, but—"
"But nothing. 'Cleared' is a bureaucratic fiction. It's a box checked by overworked detectives with 47 open cases and no time. It's a confession extracted from a scared teenager with no lawyer. It's a convenient suspect who was already in custody for something else."
He slid a stack of papers across the desk.
"Chicago. 1965. 395 homicides. 78% 'cleared.' I pulled the court records. Only 42% resulted in convictions. The rest were dismissed, pled down, or walked."
"Detroit. 345 homicides. 71% 'cleared.' Conviction rate: 38%."
"Los Angeles. 287 homicides. 68% 'cleared.' Conviction rate: 31%."
"And those are just the cases that made it to court."
Dr. Chen stared at the papers.
"...where did you get these?"
"Public records. Court filings. Newspaper archives. I have time between missions."
"You're a Protector. You fight gods. Why do you care about—"
"Because 12,240 people died last year.*
*And we're pretending we did something about it."
1967 — Devilman's Analysis (Summarized)
Devilman's personal notes, declassified 2017, reveal a chillingly accurate prediction of American criminology's next 50 years.
On Clearance Rates:
"The official statistic is 90%. The real rate—cases that result in arrest, prosecution, conviction, and appropriate sentencing—is likely below 50%. This gap will not close. It will widen."
"Police are under-resourced. Forensic science is primitive. Chain of custody is a joke. Confession evidence is given disproportionate weight despite its unreliability. And the public has no idea how bad it really is."
"When they finally measure this correctly, the true clearance rate will be closer to 60%. Maybe lower."
On Geography:
"The United States has 2.2 billion acres of land. 33% is forest. 17% is desert. Millions of acres of national parks, wilderness areas, unincorporated county land with no jurisdiction."
"You could dump a body every day for a century and never hit the same spot twice."
"We are not finding most of these people. We are not even looking for most of these people."
On Police & Public Trust:
*"The relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve is fundamentally broken. In majority-Black neighborhoods, clearance rates are 20-30% lower than in white neighborhoods. Not because the crimes are harder to solve. Because witnesses don't talk. Families don't cooperate. Trust is zero."*
"This is not a bug. This is a feature. Fifty years of aggressive policing, civil rights violations, and systemic racism have produced exactly what they were designed to produce: a population that views police as an occupying force, not public servants."
"And the department will never admit it. So the gap persists."
On Forensic Science:
"Fingerprint analysis is subjective. Blood typing excludes, but does not identify. Hair comparison is junk science. Bite mark analysis is astrology for detectives."
"DNA is coming. It will change everything. But it will take 20 years to implement, another 20 to standardize, and by then the backlog will be measured in hundreds of thousands of untested kits."
"And it won't matter for the cases where no one collected evidence in the first place."
The Conclusion:
"The system is not failing. The system is functioning exactly as designed."
"It is designed to produce acceptable statistics, not actual justice."
"And no one in power has any incentive to change it."
2017 — FBI Uniform Crime Report
National Homicide Clearance Rate: 58.4%
Devilman's 1967 Prediction: ~60%
Error Margin: 1.6%
2017 — National Academy of Sciences
Report on Forensic Science:
"With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source."
Devilman's 1967 Assessment: "Fingerprint analysis is subjective. Hair comparison is junk science. Bite mark analysis is astrology for detectives."
Translation: *HE CALLED THAT SHIT 50 YEARS AGO. *
2017 — Innocence Project
Exonerations since 1989: 365+
Percentage involving mistaken eyewitness identification: 70%
Percentage involving unvalidated or improper forensic science: 50%
Percentage of exonerated individuals who were originally convicted based on testimony that was later proven false: 25%
Devilman's 1967 Assessment: "Cleared doesn't mean solved. Conviction doesn't mean guilt."
Translation: *HE KNEW. HE FUCKING KNEW. *
2017 — Mapping Violence
Estimated undiscovered homicide victims in the United States:
Low estimate: 20,000
Medium estimate: 50,000
High estimate: 200,000+
Devilman's 1967 Assessment: "You could dump a body every day for a century and never hit the same spot twice."
Translation: ***HE WASN'T BEING DRAMATIC. HE WAS BEING OPTIMISTIC . *
2017 — USCT Archives, Restricted Section 7 — Declassification Order
The box was unremarkable. Cardboard. 12" x 15" x 10". Battered corners. Coffee stain on one side.
Inside:
47 spiral notebooks
14 legal pads
Approximately 3,000 loose pages
8 reference books, margins filled
1 photograph
The photograph showed a man in his 60s, 8'10", standing in front of a USCT training facility. No mecha suit. No armor. Just a civilian jacket, a tired face, and eyes that had seen too much.
On the back, in his wife's handwriting:
*"He never stopped. 1967-2017. 50 years of asking questions no one wanted to answer."*
"He was right about all of it."
"— R."
The First Notebook — 1967:
"They call me The Machine Hero. The Mechanized Destroyer. They think my greatest weapon is my suit, my reflexes, my ability to punch gods in the face and walk away."
"But the real weapon is this."
"The ability to look at a system—any system—and find its breaking points."
"The criminal justice system has 12,240 breaking points. One for every victim no one avenged."
"I can't fix it. I'm not a cop. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a politician."
"But I can document it."
"I can write it down. I can leave the evidence."
"And maybe, 50 years from now, someone will read this and say: 'He knew. He saw it coming. Why didn't we listen?'"
The Last Notebook — 2017:
"58.4%."
"I was off by 1.6%."
"...not bad for a guy with no powers."
They called him The Machine Hero.
They called him The Mechanized Destroyer.
They called him the Absence, the Null, the Screaming Void where power goes to die.
But in the criminology departments, the law schools, the cold case units—
—the places where they still remember that justice is supposed to mean something—
—they called him something else.
They called him right.
Devilman never solved 12,240 murders.
He never found the bodies in the forests, the deserts, the ditches.
He never fixed the system.
But he looked at it.
He studied it.
He understood it.
And he left behind 50 years of proof that the failure was not inevitable.
It was chosen.
That's not a power.
That's not a Catalyst.
That's just a man who refused to look away.
And 50 years later, when the clearance rate finally dropped to 58.4%, when the FBI admitted what he'd known since 1967, when the criminologists published their studies and the reformers cited his numbers—
—he was already gone.
Retired.
Living in a quiet house with his wife, who had once tried to erase him from existence and now made him coffee every morning.
But the notebooks remained.
3,000 pages.
47 volumes.
50 years of asking: Why aren't we doing better?
And no one could answer.
Because the answer was too uncomfortable.
Because the answer was:
"We don't want to."
FBI Director, Press Conference — October 2017:
"The decline in clearance rates is a complex issue with multiple contributing factors. We are committed to working with our partners at all levels to—"
Devilman's Notebook #47 — Final Entry:
"They'll have excuses."
"They always have excuses."
"Budget cuts. Staffing shortages. Changing criminal behavior. The opioid epidemic. The internet. Anything except the truth."
"The truth is that solving murder is hard. It takes time. It takes resources. It takes trust between police and communities, and that trust was broken so long ago that no one alive remembers what it felt like when it was whole."
"The truth is that we, as a society, have decided that murder is acceptable as long as it happens to the right people in the right neighborhoods."
"The truth is that 58.4% is not a failure of the system."
"It is the system."
"...I'm tired."
"50 years is enough."
"Let someone else carry the notebooks."
END SCENE
SCENE: THE GLASS COFFIN
LOCATION: SPAMA Memorial Cemetery — Hero's Rest
DATE: March 17, 2017
OCCASION: Funeral of Maria Catherine — Wife of Devilman, Protector #6
ATTENDEES: Council members, USCT officials, civilian dignitaries
THE WIDOWER: Devilman — Protector #6 (Active)
The cemetery was silent.
Not the reverent silence of a church. Not the respectful silence of mourners. Just... silence. The kind that settles over places where too much grief has been absorbed into the earth.
Hero's Rest was the newest section of SPAMA—the Superhuman Personnel Archive & Memorial Authority. A museum. A cemetery. A statement.
"We do not forget our own."
Seventy-three heroes were interred here. Their bodies preserved in glass coffins, frozen at -196° Celsius, suspended in perfect, unchanging stillness. Bulletproof. Unbreakable. Attached to steel walls reinforced to withstand earthquakes, bombings, Catalyst strikes.
A monument to the dead.
A promise to the living.
Maria Catherine's coffin was the seventy-fourth.
But she was not a hero.
She was a civilian.
The exception. The anomaly. The wife.
The Council had debated it for three days. SPAMA's charter was explicit: "Reserved for Protectors and their immediate families who have rendered extraordinary service to the American Remnant."
Maria Catherine had never rendered service.
She had never fired a weapon.
Never worn a uniform.
Never carried a Catalyst.
She had simply loved Devilman for sixty-three years.
And that, the Council decided, was extraordinary enough.
She looked... peaceful.
Eighty-four years of life had etched themselves into her face—crow's feet at her eyes, laugh lines around her mouth, the gentle softness of a woman who had never been forced to harden herself into a weapon. Her hair, once brown, was silver-white, carefully arranged on the satin pillow.
She wore her wedding ring.
Not a Protector's insignia. Not service medals. Not a rifle that had ended 847 lives.
Just the ring.
And a simple grey dress.
She would have hated the dress, Devilman thought. She always said grey made her look washed out.
He didn't smile.
He didn't cry.
He just... stood.
The funeral was small.
Council members attended. Lifeblood, ancient and weary, his fever-dimmed to a respectful warmth. Fonikó Desukurō, a shadow in the back row, present but unseen. The White Stag, his radiance muted, his great helm bowed.
Lady Death came.
She sat in the front row. Not as #9. Not as the surgical final answer, the endpoint of 847 lives.
As a friend.
Her hands—the same hands that had fired fourteen timeline erasure rounds at her husband in 1964—were clasped in her lap. Steady. Still.
Her face was unreadable.
But her eyes...
Her eyes were red.
Hellsing came. Seventy-seven years old, his body a ruin of scars and necrotic tissue, his chainsaw arm a dead weight at his side. He sat in the back, breathing through the hole in his chest, and said nothing.
Talloran did not attend. He was 2,500 miles away, dormant beneath the Rockies. But at 10:47 AM—the moment of Maria's death—seismographs registered a single, low-frequency pulse.
A mourning song. 300 million tons of grief.
For a woman he had never met.
Because she was the wife of the man who had knocked on his face and asked if he was "done."
The eulogies were spoken.
Commissioners praised her devotion. Historians catalogued her patience. Strategists analyzed the strategic value of a stable domestic partnership in high-stress Catalyst operatives.
They spoke of Maria Catherine, the civilian, the wife, the anchor.
No one mentioned that she had learned to bake bread during her retirement and never quite mastered it.
No one mentioned that she kept a garden, even though she had no Catalyst to make it grow—she just liked flowers.
No one mentioned that she and Devilman had a son—Robert Jr.—who worked in medical logistics and had never once used his father's name to advance his career.
They didn't know.
They hadn't asked.
Devilman stood at the front of the assembly.
8'10". 94 years old. His mecha suit was off—not retired, just... resting. He wore a black suit, tailored to accommodate shoulders that had caught a dragon's fist. His face was scarred, weathered, utterly still.
Someone handed him a microphone.
He looked at it.
Looked at the coffin.
Looked at Lady Death—Maria's best friend for forty years and his ex wife.—sitting in the front row with red eyes and steady hands.
"She wasn't a hero."
Silence.
"She never wanted to be a hero."
"She just wanted to be Maria."
He paused.
"...and she was."
"Every single day."
"For sixty-three years."
"That's more than any of us ever managed."
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't need to.
The glass coffin was sealed.
Not by technicians. Not by SPAMA officials. Devilman placed the lid himself, his weathered hands steady, his movements precise. The cryogenic system hummed to life. Frost bloomed across the interior surface, slowly obscuring Maria's face.
He watched until he couldn't see her anymore.
Then he turned and walked away.
Lady Death watched him go.
Her hands—still steady, still still—gripped each other in her lap.
She had known Maria for forty years.
They had met in 1977, at a USCT spouse's function. Maria had spilled coffee on Lady Death's uniform. Apologized profusely. Insisted on paying the dry cleaning bill.
Lady Death had never paid a dry cleaning bill in her life. She didn't know how.
Maria taught her.
Over forty years, Maria taught her a lot of things.
How to bake bread. (Maria never mastered it. Lady Death was worse.)
How to keep a garden. (Maria's thrived. Lady Death's withered. They never figured out why.)
How to be a wife, a mother, a person—not a weapon, not an endpoint, not a final answer.
Just... Maria's friend.
"She loved you, you know."
Devilman's voice. Quiet. From the doorway.
Lady Death didn't turn around.
"...I know."
"She said you were the bravest person she ever met."
"...I shot at my own Ex husband."
"And she said that was the saddest thing she ever heard."
Silence.
"She said no one should have to love someone they're afraid to miss."
Lady Death's hands finally trembled.
Just slightly.
Just once.
"...she was too good for all of us."
"Yes."
"She was."
Devilman left.
Lady Death sat alone in the empty cemetery.
The glass coffin gleamed under the fluorescent lights.
Seventy-four heroes.
One civilian.
One woman who never carried a weapon but taught gods how to be human.
That was Maria.
Not Lady Death's friend.
Not Devilman's wife.
Not Robert Jr.'s mother.
Just Maria.
And she was enough.
The apartment was too quiet.
He'd lived here for sixty-three years. The walls had absorbed a thousand conversations, two thousand meals, three thousand nights of her breathing beside him.
Now the walls just... waited.
He sat at his desk.
The same battered steel desk from 1967. The same reading lamp. The same stack of notebooks.
He opened a fresh one.
Dated it.
March 17, 2017.
His hand hovered over the page.
Fifty years of documentation. Fifty years of asking questions no one wanted to answer. Fifty years of proving that the system was broken, that the statistics were lies, that 12,240 murders meant 12,240 families who never got closure.
She had read every page.
Every notebook.
Every question, every proof, every indictment.
And she had said: "You're right. Now what are you going to do about it?"
That was Maria.
Always asking the next question.
Always pushing him forward.
Always believing he could be more than just a machine.
He closed the notebook.
Set down the pen.
Turned off the lamp.
The Machine Hero sat in the dark.
Alone.
For the first time in sixty-three years.
He would continue living.
He would continue fighting.
He would continue carrying the notebooks, asking the questions, proving the system was broken.
That was what she would want.
That was what Maria would expect.
But tonight—
—just tonight—
—he allowed himself to stop.
To be still.
To be quiet.
To be the absence she had spent sixty-three years filling with her presence.
The glass coffin kept its vigil.
The frozen woman kept her peace.
And 2,500 miles away, a dragon god shifted in its sleep, dreaming of a tiny, loud mammal who had once touched its face and asked if it was "done."
The world continued.
It always did.
But for one man, in one dark room, on one March night—
—the world had stopped.
And he didn't know if it would ever start again.
END SCENE