Killing The Apocalypse Devil Chapter 1 (Two Shot)

This was done for fun and my love for DandanDan. Not to be taken too serious. Why? Because it's a fever dream.

Chapter 1 – The Final Episode That Never Was.

-

The world ended with a blackout.

No fire and brimstone at first. No trumpet calls or horsemen. Just the sudden, soul-piercing silence of a dead screen where the DandanPan finale should have been. The buffering icon spun a few mocking rotations, then froze, a pixelated ouroboros of cosmic betrayal. Then came the screaming.

Kazuo sat in a tangle of extension cords and plastic figurines, still holding the remote with the reverence of a priest clutching a dead god’s jawbone. The TV was dark. The room smelled faintly of expired curry and unfulfilled dreams.

"Two minutes left," he said aloud, more to the void than to anyone living. His voice was soft but toneless, like a blade sliding out of its sheath. "Two."

From the corner, Kaede didn't look up from her perch near the sniper nest she’d fashioned out of an old kotatsu and a pile of shredded cosplay outfits. Her fingers, usually steady enough to thread a bullet through a keyhole from five hundred meters, trembled. She set down her pen—she had been inking a lewd-but-tasteful doujinshi panel when the blackout hit—and stood.

"Did you check the breaker?" she asked, though she already knew. The entire city had gone black. From the creaking bones of the skyline, she could still see the pulse of fire beyond the glass, a rhythmic burning like the heartbeat of a demon falling in love with destruction.

Kazuo didn't answer. He rose slowly, letting the wire he’d been coiling around his forearm slither back into its case. His expression hadn't changed, but something in his posture had shifted. Slightly forward. Chin tilted half a degree lower. His eyes, previously dulled by weeks of ramen and fan forums, had the glint of someone remembering who he used to be.

Mittens the cat watched from atop the bookshelf, tail twitching like a metronome counting down the Devil’s trial. The cat was cross-legged in a way no real cat should be. A cigarette glowed between his lips, and the smoke curled upward into the faint shape of a middle finger.

"It’s not just us," he said. "The whole grid’s gone. Hell rose, angels wept, all the clichés. I even saw a barista get raptured mid-espresso. No more coffee either, by the way."

Kaede raised a brow. "Did you check the satellite dish?"

"It melted."

"USB backup?"

Kazuo answered, still staring at the dead screen. "Encrypted stream. Auto-deletes in ten minutes if not completed."

"So... we lost the ending?"

"No," Kazuo said flatly. "We were denied the ending."

A distant howl rose outside. Something inhuman shrieked in chorus. The world was reshaping itself into Hell’s favorite nightmare, and neither of them had noticed. Because at that precise moment, nothing mattered more than what happened to Dandan after episode 107.

Kaede sighed and sat beside Kazuo. The silence stretched between them. They had once toppled nations with a glance, made warlords weep by name. And yet now they sat in utter defeat, assassins undone not by bullets, but by buffering.

Mittens leapt down and padded across the table. He sat beside the remote, tail curling around his paws like royalty in exile.

“Alright, I know you two gave up murder for moe, but I have a modest proposal,” he said. “We kill the Devil.”

Kazuo didn’t blink. “Because he ended the world?”

“No. Because he took our show.”

Kaede stood again. Her fingers found her rifle case, the one marked with a faded sticker of DandanDan’s grinning female protagonist giving a peace sign with bloodied fingers. She popped it open, revealing a weapon that looked more like a musical instrument than a gun—polished, custom-forged, and very much ready.

"You think he's still in the Nexus Tower?" she asked, voice quiet.

It had been months since the Devil left earth to seek Asylum on Earth after a supposed 'coup' in hell. What a surprise the fucker was lying.

"Throning," Mittens answered. "Like the little megalomaniac he is. Open hellgate. Demons coming in through the plumbing. But more importantly—"

"He has the last working signal," Kazuo finished.

They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t need to. One was already braiding copper wire into a garrote. The other was loading bullets engraved with kanji insults. And the cat, already halfway through his third cigarette, was making a mental list of demons he intended to personally insult before killing.

Outside, the world burned beautifully. Carcasses of old dreams lay twitching in alleyways. Shadows grew fangs and cities collapsed like forgotten poetry. Somewhere in the wreckage, demons danced through the remains of convenience stores.

And in the center of it all stood a tower made of glass, steel, and sin, pulsing with infernal light.

Kaede hoisted her rifle and turned toward the balcony.

“I want my damn ending,” she said.

Kazuo stepped beside her, wire glinting between his fingers.

“Let’s make Satan bleed for it.”

And with that, they would step into the apocalypse—not to save the world, not for justice, not even for vengeance in the traditional sense.

But because some stories are sacred.

And they weren’t about to let the Devil spoil the finale.

-0-

The sun had not risen in a week during their DandanPan binge induced coma, but the sky still shifted tones—sickly purple to rusted crimson, like bruises on a dying god. The city sprawled below their building, a landscape of shattered concrete and demonic graffiti, and somewhere out there, past the gutted train lines and collapsed malls, the Nexus Tower glowed like a wound that refused to clot.

But that would come later.

First, there was the matter of the collar.

Kazuo kneeled in the rubble of what used to be their apartment’s hallway, brushing aside plaster dust with careful fingers. The dog—Bork-sama—had been devoured a week ago by a giggling Imp with teeth like can openers- according to Mittens anyway. There hadn’t been a body. Just the sounds, the cat recounted. And the collar. Half-eaten. The charm shaped like a tiny ramen bowl had survived.

Kaede stood behind him, holding a cracked wooden box they'd found in the ruins of a shrine. She had scrubbed it clean with bottled water and a single-use toothbrush. She was already in her long coat, the one with hidden compartments and patches from various anime expos sewn inside. The rifle was slung across her back, but for once she wasn’t thinking about trajectories or kill-zones.

Kazuo placed the collar in the box like it was a relic. He didn’t say anything.

“You think he knew what was happening?” Kaede asked.

“Bork-sama was dumb as a futon,” Kazuo replied. “He probably thought it was a belly rub.”

She nodded solemnly. “He died as he lived. Loud. Inappropriate.”

They sat there for a moment in silence. No prayers. Just memory. A farting, yapping little creature that had once barked at vacuum commercials and peed with righteous fury on Kaede’s sniper case. It had followed them through retirement like a chaperone neither of them had asked for, but secretly adored.

Kazuo lit a stick of incense from his wire burner and stuck it into a crack in the floor.

They watched the smoke curl. A soft, sharp sound broke the stillness—Mittens yawning.

The cat stood on the kitchen counter, grooming one paw with exaggerated slowness.

“If you two are done grieving that ambulatory mop,” he said, “I’ll do a sweep.”

Kaede blinked. “A what?”

“A sweep. You know, reconnaissance. You used to be assassins. I thought you’d appreciate the terminology. Or do you need to sacrifice a chew toy next?”

Kazuo raised an eyebrow. “You scout?”

Mittens rolled his eyes, then leapt from the counter with feline grace and disdain only a cat could embody.

“I’ll be back before dinner. Try not to cry over a flea collar while I’m gone.”

And with that, he sauntered out the broken window frame onto the half-collapsed fire escape, tail raised like a flag of impunity. He disappeared down the ruins, murmuring something about demon mice and whether they squeaked in Latin.

The silence that followed was immediate and too complete.

Kaede finally said what had clearly been brewing beneath the entire funeral.

“Wait.”

Kazuo nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

She turned to him, deadpan. “When the fuck did the cat start talking?”

Kazuo opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“…Have we just… always understood him? Like some weird shared delusion?”

“I thought you were doing a voice for him.”

Kazuo scowled. “I don’t do voices.”

Kaede leaned back against a crumbling wall, arms folded. “Okay. So the cat talks.”

“And smokes.”

“Right. And apparently knows tactical terminology.”

Kazuo frowned deeper. “Do you think he’s possessed by a demon?”

Kaede considered that. “Would explain the smugness.”

They sat in that realization for a moment. The incense crackled.

Kazuo said, “I once saw him play chess against himself. He cheated.”

Mittens had always been peculiar...

Kaede stared into the sky, which was now the shade of arterial blood and slowly pulsing.

“We’ve been retired too long.”

Kazuo stood up and snapped the incense stick in half, letting the smoke curl into the wind.

“Let’s pack.”

Kaede gave the box with Bork-sama’s collar one last glance, then placed it atop the shrine she had built out of ramen cup lids. “We’re gonna make Hell sorry it touched you, you lovable idiot.”

Kazuo adjusted the straps on his wire case and walked toward the bedroom. Inside were weapons, maps, maybe a single clean pair of underwear if the cockroaches hadn’t claimed it. Kaede followed.

Outside, somewhere in the ruined city, Mittens stalked through shadows with the low-slung patience of a predator looking for something small, vulnerable, and preferably squeaky. His pupils narrowed as he sniffed the air.

There was something new out here. Something shaped like a rat but made of sulfur and whispers. Something perfect for hunting.

Around him, the apocalypse prepared its next move.

But the assassins were no longer in mourning.

They were packing.