Fanfic / Megami no Hanabira

Demons are a girl's best friend.

Image courtesy of Artist741

Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke Wo (A Kiss for the Petals) is a fluffy Yuri Eroge series, in which the biggest issues facing the characters are at worst an argument and/or the threat of a break-up. Shin Megami Tensei is a dark JRPG series, in which the regular issues the characters have to deal with are demon outbreaks, the end of the world, and a Forever War between a tyrannical God and a Devil who wants nothing but unrestrained anarchy.

Megami no Hanabira takes the characters of the former and places them in the situations of the latter.

Written by Krimzon Flygon, Megami no Hanabira details the adventures of Mai Sawaguchi, her girlfriend Reo Kawamura and their friends Nanami Oda, Yuuna Matsubara and Sara Kitajima, as they try to survive an outbreak of demons in their home city. Aiding their efforts are 'Cypher', the mysterious Demon Summoning Program, which allows them to recruit and use demons of their own for protection, and a decidedly shadowy organization of Angel-wielders known as the Flock, who may have more to do with the present situation then they are letting on...

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Megami no Hanabira Contains Examples of:

• The Ace: Yuuna: she's smart, beautiful, and a talented enough Tamer to have survived a full night outside the park amongst an endless horde of demons without any backup. Granted, she's a wreck when the girls find her, but a quick jolt of healing magic gets her right back up. She's a few steps up from the girls when they first meet up with her, having multiple demons under her control before they do, and she continues to be one of the strongest members of their group even after they rack up some combat experience.
  • Tomohisa is even stronger than Yuuna, and likely any single one of the girls: he manages to go toe-to-toe with Naito where the Yakuza Patriarch had the aforementioned Yuuna completely outmatched in their battle, and owns a revolver on top of his demons. Despite his limited ammo, this makes him the only character in the story with a firearm, and he uses it to great effect on Ethan and Naito.
• Action Girl: Though Mai, like her friends, would usually rather let her demons do the fighting, she's gotten physical with her opponents when the situation called for it: knocking Pixie unconscious with a punch, and then monkey-flipping a Tokebi that tried to attack her while she was on the ground.
  • Colette fits this even better: she's absolutely merciless with that baton.
• Adaptational Villainy: Runa Houraisen was always bitchy, manipulative, self-centered and rather amoral in the actual Sono Hanabira series, but here she joins up with Naito, intending to keep her Demon Summoning Program to use for her own gain. She even ends up killing a pair of Flock members outright and doesn't bat an eye about it.
• Alternate Timeline: While the story takes place in the Sono Hanabira universe, the outbreak starting at the end of the school year the games started at, the continuity can get a little funny: Rena Houraisen is mentioned to still be a teacher at St. Michael's while she left for the US before the end of the school year in the games proper, for one. The entire canon timeline goes out the window by the end of the story with the city almost entirely destroyed by the outbreak, forcing the characters to go their separate ways.
• Anger Born of Worry: After Mai wakes up from having been knocked out by Kabuso, Reo swats her and, on the verge of tears, screams never to scare her like that again.
• Angst Coma: Reo, when she learns that the food they had all been looking for was gone. It lasts until Phillips offers them all something to eat. She lapses into this again after learning that Mai had been caught by the Flock and is likely dead. Very much NOT Played for Laughs the second time around.
• Ax-Crazy: Brother Chick; an absolute psychopath who goes out of his way to torment the girls and rub in their helplessness and despair as he fights them. He mood-swings between a shallow facade of upbeat cheerfulness and cold, murderous rage, and is not above trying to choke the life out of his own comrades should they annoy him.
  • Phillips even more so once the girls corner him.
• Angrish: Mai lapses into this when she's pummeling Phillips at the end, stringing together random swearwords in a 'disjointed stream of obcenities'. Phillips had earlier let out what's described as a 'scream of primal gibberish' when Michael takes a particularly hard hit.
• An Ice Person: Wendigo. Sara's Jack Frost as well. Gabriel is the Archangel of Ice.
• Badass Adorable: The main characters are all quite adorable. They're also VERY good at handling demons.
• Battle Couple: Mai and Reo, and Yuuna and Nanami. Sara has a girlfriend as well: Kaede, but she's not a part of the team until Day 5.
• Battle Strip: Young!Phillips chucks away his hat, sunglasses, stole and shirt before attacking the girls.
• Berserk Button: Lucifer doesn't take kindly to Yuuna insinuating that he wants the girls as his mindless slave-warriors, getting openly angry for the first time in the story whereas he was completely unflappable before. While he doesn't lose his temper, and makes a point to clarify his desires, he makes it very clear that he wouldn't let her off easy if she said it again.
• The Berserker: Reo: always screaming, always on the offensive, with a penchant for demons like Gozuki and Yuki Jirou, who pack a metric asston of power at the cost of finesse and strategy. She even gets a demon named Berserker on Day 5.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mai's a genuine Nice Girl, a natural leader with a sense of humor, and gets along with pretty much everyone. That doesn't in any way mean she's any less dangerous: she's the leader of the group for a good goddamn reason, and probably the most violent out of all of them, her girlfriend included. Mai's a natural with the Summoning Program, the first to bring herself to harm another human being with her demons, has gone toe-to-toe with a Fiend and won, and has snapped at her friends when the stress of the situation starts getting to her. That's not even getting into what she does to Phillips when she gets her hands on him.
• Beyond Redemption:
  • Nanami makes one final attempt to appeal to Colette's better nature after the latter breaks away from Phillips. Colette immediately shuts her down, making it plain that even though she's turned on her grandfather, she feels no remorse for the outbreak itself and intends to continue the Flock's original plans. Despite Yuuna trying to comfort Nanami by claiming Colette probably saw them as her friends in the end, Nanami coldly acknowledges that Colette is just one more enemy to defeat should she get in their way.
  • Downplayed with Phillips. The girls go into the fight with no intention of forgiving him for his crimes, but Yuuna mutters that he truly can't be saved after he slaughters his underlings after the girls defeat them, proving that in the end he doesn't give a tinker's damn about anyone but himself.
• Big Bad: Father Phillips, and the rest of the Forces of Law by extension.
• Big Eater: Reo loves her snacks. She starts off as the most reluctant of the group to use her Summoning Program, but as soon as the Yakuza cut off the survivors' food supply, she's chomping at the bit to go after them.
• Big Good: Despite being an apparently neutral party with her own agenda, Cypher is this overall for the story. While giving the Summoning Program to civilians ended up empowering people like Naito, it also helped our heroes, and as of Day 4, she has approached Mai and her friends directly in order to help them further, pointing them towards the Flock's stronghold. A straighter example is Taichi Tomohisa, a policeman who had formed his own group of Tamers trying to survive the outbreak: the girls join up with him and from there he takes charge of the situation, making the major tactical decisions on how to bring down the Flock and stop the outbreak with the intel Mai and her friends supplied him.
• Big "NO!": One from Reo when she sees a shelf of her snacks come crashing down, destroying its contents, and one from Nanami when she sees Mai and Reo get blasted by Fire of Sinai.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Colette. She initially presents herself as a friendly ally to the girls (and to an extent she is genuinely nice and actually likes the girls), but at the end of the day she's a member of a terrorist organization and by extension the cause of the girls' troubles to begin with. When she turns on her grandfather for his genocidal designs, she still makes it clear she hasn't given up on the Flock's goals to create a worldwide theocracy by threatening demon outbreaks and lying to everybody, and that her grandfather's just going too far for her. Tomohisa accurately points out that in all the time they were talking, she showed no remorse for what she and the Flock had done.
  • Unlike his granddaughter, Father Phillips has no affability or redeeming factors whatsoever to counter out his depravity. The kind, avuncular persona he showed when the girls first met him is revealed to be a self-serving facade, while the true Phillips is a hateful, self-righteous, genocidal monster.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Flock is defeated, the outbreak is over, and all six main characters make it out alive, but the ending makes it clear they lost a lot over the week: Kaede's mother died, and Yuuna is outright orphaned. Worse, with the destruction of the city, the girls' families have to rebuild their homes, and this forces separation of the couples. On a brighter note, Mai is bound and determined to reunite with Reo in the future.
• Blow You Away: Reo's Abraxas, and later Matador
• Body-Count Competition: Reo and Sara have started one. Sara keeps changing the rules and lying about her score, much to Reo's chagrin.
• Boisterous Weakling: Sara certainly talks a big game, but it's clear at a glance she's the weakest of the girls and often gets in over her head. It only gets worse when Kaede joins and Sara starts trying to hot-dog and impress her, making her even more reckless.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Sara and Reo respectively, though Sara's Boke can manifest as either genuine airheadedness, or a shocking level of Genre Savvy...Reo barks at her either way.
• Breast Attack: Mai does this to herself in her frantic efforts to dodge attacks raining down on her during an ambush: she takes a diving leap behind cover and pretty much does a belly flop, and she takes a moment to bite her knuckle and fight back tears once her safety is assured.
  Mai: (thinking) YEOWW! Owowowowow...oh, my boobs...that dive was NOT a good idea!
• Broken Pedestal: The Flock naturally becomes this for Nanami: learning that they caused the outbreak to begin with and are manipulating everyone devastates her.
• The Brute: The Flock Lieutenant Chick Jackson is described as a seven-foot tower of muscle, and he is hands down one of their most unstable members. In a bit of irony, his Archangel is Raphael, who is small, thin and unspeakably fast...until the girls land a few hits on him and it's revealed that he's a full-fledged Lightning Bruiser.
• Came Back Strong: Kaiwan makes a return on the 6th day, and now that the city is filled with enough Magnetite it can take on its true form: Hastur, The King in Yellow.
• Cast Full of Gay: The jury's out on Colette, and Philips is her grandfather, but the main characters all fit this. Considering they come from a Yuri Visual Novel, this is to be expected.
• The Chains of Commanding: Mai shows hints of this throughout the story, manifesting as her trying to figure everything out herself and overall taking way too much responsibility. It comes to a head when she drops the bombshell about the Flock's true nature, realizes she has no idea how to deal with them, and beats herself up over it, calling herself a joke of a leader who relies on ad-lib.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Nanami adopts a line from Mai and uses it as a mantra whenever she gets scared or hesitant.
  Nanami: This is the situation I'm in. Complaining and hiding my head in the sand isn't going to change anything. All I can do now is what I can.
  • Yuuna has a habit of expressing happiness with "Wonderful." To a lesser extent, "Tch..." when she's aggravated: a number of the characters do it, but she by far does it the most.
• The Chosen One: Played with with Mai and the others: it's not a prophecy or the like that designates them as the ones to save the day: it's their personal qualities and skills that win Lucifer's favor, leading him to respond in kind with information and opportunities to help them along, culminating in him offering to make them Godslayers under his command. Indeed, Lucifer specifically set the outbreak up to better find a champion to back: Naito is heavily implied to have been one of the people to catch his eye before his constant failures made him fall out of Lucifer's favor.
• Close-Call Haircut: Reo gets one from a Macabre: she ducks in time to evade its scythe, but she still loses a chunk of her hair.
• Clothing Damage: Nanami gets an un-sexy example of this when Anael hits her across the chest with a Sword Beam: it blows her backwards, slashing her shirt open and giving her a huge gash across the chest. Healing magic patches the gash up, but Nanami is left holding her shirt closed for the rest of the fight.
• Combat Medic: Nanami ends up in this role as the story progresses: she's usually packing a Megami, Femme, or other sort of demon with a proclivity towards healing, and focuses her on keeping her allies healthy. Alongside said healer she usually employs a monstrous demon like Kudlak or Samael who handles the offense.
• Cool Shades: Phillips sports a reflective pair of round sunglasses. Doubles as Sinister Shades with the reveal of his true nature.
• Cowardly Lion: Nanami falls into this category. She's easily intimidated by the scope of her situation and is far and away the most emotionally vulnerable of the team, but she pulls through when it counts. She slowly loses the 'Cowardly' aspect over the course of the story as the situation starts to wear down on her.
• Cutting the Knot: Uriel's only real weakness is how slow he is, and he's so overwhelmingly powerful and durable that injuring him is a foolish prospect. His master Ethan, however, is a different story. Boom, Headshot!.
• Dance Battler: Asmodeus: his entire body is made up of sharp, bony armored plates and spikes, and despite his bulk he moves with astonishing grace, basically becoming a huge, spinning blade.
• Dark Messiah: The Flock's true plans, through the world's greatest Monster Protection Racket. Naito too, who wants To Create A Playground For Chaos and foster a worldwide class/race war 'For Great Justice'.
• Darker and Edgier: WRIT LARGE. The characters from an adorable Yuri Visual Novel are thrown into the situations of one of the darkest entries in a notoriously dark video game franchise. But at the same time...
  • Lighter and Softer: The lightness of Sono Hanabira is present as well: none of the heroes have died yet, and there's plenty of comic relief courtesy of Reo and Sara.
• Darkest Hour: Day 5. It ends with Mai captured by the Flock, Reo in an Angst Coma, the revelation of how twisted the Flock truly is, Yuuna and the remaining girls realizing that they are totally outnumbered and outgunned, and their food is gone again after all the work they put in to get it back.
• Dark Is Not Evil: As far as demons go, Yuuna shows a particular fondness toward Biblical Bad Guys like Murmur, Lucifuge and Lilith. Personality-wise, despite being genuinely friendly and empathetic toward others she's capable of remarkable cruelty toward her enemies. Regardless, she's solidly on the side of the heroes.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Naito deconstructs the Hope Bringer and Bully Hunter: whatever good intentions he has are buried beneath his violent nature and dogmatic obsession with what he believes 'hope' and 'justice' are; namely that the oppressed should have the chance to bring violent retribution down on the oppressive class. His words reveal an inordinate level of Black-and-White Insanity in this regard; he's quick to roundly declare the lives of minorities as absolutely hopeless and filled with despair at the hands of the evil majority, and is convinced that given the chance, every one of them would jump at his offer to butcher and slaughter the ones in charge. It's telling that the main characters, all five of them lesbians, are less than welcoming of (read: appalled by) his plans, as they are in fact NOT angry, vengeful individuals chomping at the bit to slaughter straight people, and don't want society at large to collapse into violent anarchy, and Naito doesn't want to hear a word they have to say.
  • Colette deconstructs the Token Good Teammate. Turns out a friendly attitude and lack of ill will toward the victims of the outbreak the Flock caused don't make you an ultimately good person. After all, if you have a decent personality and a working conscience, it takes a particular brand of evil to willingly disregard them and commit the Flock's brand of atrocities. If anything, the disparity makes it worse, and people will likely consider you just as despicable as the rest of your team, if not more so.
• Demonic Possession: According to Risa and Miya, one of their escapades involved Takako Suminoe getting possessed by "an ancient Egyptian desert god". Said god turns out to be Set, with Takako using it against Risa and Miya during the final battle.
• Despair Event Horizon: Nanami comes close after learning the Flock, who she had pretty much been idolizing, are the ones behind the outbreak, but Yuuna pulls her out of it. Reo on the other hand plows over it and ends up in an Angst Coma after learning that Mai, who she loves, was taken and probably killed by the Flock.
• Determinator: Once he stops hiding behind his goons and Archangel, Phillips shows himself to be this in excellence. It takes the demons of all six girls working together to finally take him down in a long, grueling fight, and even then it's just a matter of the body being weak: once he manages to possess Metatron's body, an act he pulls off through sheer willpower, he's right back into the fray.
• Devour the Dragon: Metatron's attempt to do this to Phillips after the Sinister Minister is defeated by Mai and her friends backfires spectacularly as Phillips takes over his body to continue fighting the girls.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Reo and Sara have an argument over who has the best demon, bassed on both design and stats, echoing back to the days of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon trading cards.
• Dueling Messiahs: Two Dark Messiahs, at that: on one hand we have Shusui Naito, who wants to overthrow society itself and create a world where the oppressed can take revenge on their oppressors and fancies himself as fighting For Great Justice and giving the people 'hope'. The other is Father Archibald Phillips, who caused the outbreak to begin with so that he can be hailed as a hero and hold demons over humanity as boogeymen to scare them into doing what he wants. Played with with the girls: unlike the other two major players of the outbreak, they have no interest whatsoever in playing messiah or enforcing their own values on the world at large. All they want is to end the outbreak and survive. Nonetheless, thanks to Lucifer guiding them and helping them after they catch his interest, they become essentially The Chosen Many, and by the end of the story most of the survivors have pinned their hopes on them.
• Dumb Muscle: Thinking isn't Reo's strong suit. She's by no means an idiot, but she's often the one who needs things explained to her, and is overall the quickest to summon her demons against a perceived threat.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Who do you get when you fuse Barong and Rangda? Shiva, Lord of Dance and the Destroyer, who Reo fuses mid-battle with Metatron!Phillips: the Destroyer proves integral to turning the tables on him.
• The End... Or Is It?: The story ends with the demons and angels banished and Mai and her family on a train heading to their new home. Mai glances out the window...and notices Cypher in the crowd, looking right at her and grinning.
• Enemy Scan: Mai takes it upon herself to analyze the enemies she and her friends encounter, rattling off their Race, strengths and weaknesses before formulating a plan to counter it. Any of the girls' phones have the scan function, but there's some unspoken agreement to have Mai do it, as she's The Leader and the one to come up with strategies.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The backbone of Lucifer's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Colette. In truth, he's not all that bad, but it's still the Devil telling a devoutly religious person how much of a lying, hypocritical, self-righteous scumbag she is.
• Expy: The story takes place more or less in the Devil Survivor series continuum: the Mortician's List is the latest incarnation of the Laplace Mail or Nicea, while the Flock is more or less the Shomonkai, complete with a leader with a daughter who helps the team, and deeper connections to the outbreak then they let on. The Demon Summoning Program even says "Peaceful Days are Over: Let's Survive" when it first boots up. That said, the story samples from other Megaten games: Day 4 has the girls sucked into a Demon's Domain.
  • Design-wise, Phillips is heavily reminiscent of Preacher.
  • Virtue is presented as a statue-like angel, who dons a fanged snarl whenever it attacks in a manner similar to the Weeping Angels.
  • Naito is very much like Yamato from Devil Survivor 2, espousing dreams of a meritocracy.
• Eye Beams: The Jabberwock's preferred techniques besides its claws and fangs.
  And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock with eyes of flame...
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: When Phillips finally falls, Mai pins him to the ground and beats his face in until her arms get too tired and she physically can't wail on him anymore, at which point she tries to strangle him to death. Yuuna stops her from doing so, but only so that he can face justice for his crimes, which for someone like Phillips would be a thousand times worse than just dying.
• Faux Affably Evil: Brother Chick of the Flock when he's in 'cheerfully condescending' mode. Considering how smoothly he can switch between this and out-and-out malice and back again in the span of a single sentence, it's pretty unnerving.
• Finger-Tenting: Phillips does a Gendo Pose at a couple of points during his first conversation with the girls.
• Face of a Thug: Tomohisa is rather frightening in appearance, being based off the cops◊ from the Devil Survivor series. In actuality, he's a charismatic and perfectly friendly individual who ultimately becomes the Big Good.
• Folk Music: A line from 'O Death' is the chapter quote for Day 4. Fittingly, the chapter is titled Shadow of Death, and the girls go toe-to-to with a Fiend, ie. an incarnation of Death.
• Foreshadowing: Day 0 starts with a quote from Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, and there's a bit of foreshadowing and double meanings in it regarding the truth behind the outbreak.:
  Call it what you will—A revelation from God, or a curse of the demon king. The fact remains that our world came to an end. A heretic called upon an unearthly light, and devastation ensued. Chaos crawled out of the depths of the ocean, from the black abyss. Death upon death... nothing but death in this barren land. Who can we pray to? There are only demons and fiends here...
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Nanami, Sara, Reo and Kaede get the four Riders as their Fiends on Day 6: White Rider (Pestilence), Red Rider (War), Black Rider (Famine), and Pale Rider (Death) respectively.
• Four Is Death: The girls battle Matador, a Fiend and incarnation of Death on Day 4 of the outbreak. Day 4 also marks a number of revelations and irrevocable changes to the status quo.
• Freak Out: Naito hit this at some point in his backstory: he came from a wealthy background, and he always felt bad for those less well-off than himself. So he gave up his wealth and status and tried to live as they do...and failed miserably. At this point he snapped, became consumed with self-loathing hatred for the privileged, and decided to create a class war to decide who was truly worthy of greatness.
  • Phillips: the exact moment he loses it is when Colette calls in with the news that Ethan has been killed. It's at this point that he realizes that the wheels have completely come off his scheme, but even then he simply cannot accept it despite the evidence staring him in the face. The result: Phillips just snaps.
• The Gadfly: Mai: she seems to get a real kick out of teasing Reo. Sara likes to pick on her, too.
• Godwin's Law: Ultimately averted; though Mai considers comparing Phillips and the Flock to Nazis after learning of their aims, she's ultimately too horrified to do so, and settles for stammering that there's something wrong with them.
• Groin Attack: Sara's finest moment: her Frost Ace manages to slip past Phillips's guard and punch him right in the nuts.
• Guile Hero: Mai's pretty sharp, bluffing Phillips into revealing himself as a liar and cementing her suspicions of him. Yuuna takes it to a whole new level.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Reo's temper is ferocious, and most of the time she doesn't even try to control it. This carries over to her fighting style: complete and utter reckless abandon.
• Face–Heel Turn: Runa and Takako join up with Naito, though in the case of the latter, Runa strongarmed her into coming along and Takako was too spineless to stand up for herself. Judging by Risa and Miya's reaction, they took the betrayal rather hard.
• Growing Muscles Sequence: Touki-race demons have the Race Skill Aggravate: by sacrificing some of their health, they get a huge boost to their physical abilities for a short period of time. How this is shown varies from demon to demon, but for most of them their muscles grow exponentially.
• Hate Sink: After the reveal of his true nature, Phillips shows himself to have absolutely zero redeeming factors: on top of the fact he's a misanthropic, deceitful, murderous, cowardly, sadistic asshole with a total lack of empathy, there's his ego. Ohhh, LAWDY does Phillips have an ego. At the height of his breakdown he can't go two sentences without crowing about how great he is, even as he's being pummeled. Not even his own allies are safe from him, as he kills a group of his underlings for losing to the girls, and then when Metatron deals a well-deserved punishment to Phillips for his stunning failures, Phillips turns the tables on the Voice of God Himself and the closest thing Phillips has to a direct superior, stealing the angel's body and using it to continue his fight against the girls. It's telling that out of all the people following him by the end of the story, only one of them does so out of something besides fear and desperation, and he's nearly as deranged as his boss.
• Heroic BSoD: Sara hits one after she's nearly killed by Brother Chick. Throughout the chapter she had been trying to look cool for Kaede, who had just joined the team, and her attempts repeatedly exploded in her face, and her brush with death finally ended up doing a number on her self-confidence.
• Heroic Sacrifice: From a Flock soldier, no less; staying behind to hold off Kaiwan while the others escape.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: A minor example, but Mai calls herself 'a joke' of a leader when she realizes how in over their heads the team is. Aided by the fact she had just royally pissed off Reo and the others when they found out she was keeping secrets from them.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Yuuna attempts to use Ogun's Bind Race Skill to hold Kaiwan still during their fight. She remembers too late that Ogun's metal chains conduct electricity, and Kaiwan gleefully vaporizes her demon with Ziodyne.
• Hold the Line: Tomohisa and the rest of the Tamer faction volunteer to hold off Naito and Colette's forces in front of the hospital, keeping them from going for the Server while Mai and her friends, wielding Fiends, take the fight directly to Phillips.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Sara, after seeing her girlfriend Kaede get hurt trying to protect her from a demon.
• Indy Ploy: Mai's specialty. She has a knack for Eureka Moments and building strategies off of them on the fly. Deconstructed when she reveals what kind of strain she's under, basically saying just flying by the seat of her pants makes her really nervous and she would much rather have solid strategies going in.
• In the Hood: The Flock uniform: a white hoodie with a black cross stitched on the back. Again, very similar to the Shomonkai.
• Invocation: The Flock lieutenants summon their Archangels with "In Nomine Patris Et Filii Et Spiritus Sancti!"
• Irony: Naito, the Chaos representative for the story, uses Baphomet as one of his two demons. While Baphomet is certainly associated with Satanic imagery, he is of the Vile Race, which on the SMT alignment axis is designated as Lawful.
• It Can Think: The Jabberwock is clearly way smarter than its bestial appearance would suggest: it quickly learns tactics used against it and adapts, and when it realizes it's outmatched it plays dead until the heroes leave, at which point it chooses to fly away rather than sneak attack them. Even Yuuna is impressed by its intelligence.
• It Won't Turn Off: Right after the outbreak begins and Mai and Reo flee from the demons, their cell phones turn on by themselves and start downloading something, and nothing they try can stop it. When the download completes...the phones shut down and won't turn on again. But then they turn on again...and activate the Summoning Programs.
• I Was Quite a Looker: When Metatron restores Phillips's youth, the withered, balding old man is revealed to have been incredibly handsome (and ripped) in his prime.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: Nanami starts off as probably the sweetest and most emotionally vulnerable of the group, and while she never loses it completely she becomes noticeably colder and fiercer after the Flock's true nature is revealed and she comes out of her subsequent breakdown, having far less reservations about using her demons on other human beings and being on board with taking the offense instead of just using the Program in self-defense.
• Kick Them While They're Down: On top of beating a fallen Phillips while he's down, Mai responds to his taunts afterwards by stomping on his face and kicking him in the ribs.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Naito has Yuuna on the ropes during their fight, but ultimately he flees when he realizes that Yuuna's friends are finishing off his cronies, which would leave him having to fight all of them at once. He spares enough time for a parting shot; he collapses a shelf, creating a barrier and buying enough time for him to escape.
• Large Ham: Kaiwan. So very much. The girls encounter a Flock member with a rather flowery style of speaking as well: Nanami outright calls him a ham. Phillips is right up there as well: his voice is so thundering and powerful that even his normal speaking tone comes across as loud and bombastic. When he's in the throes of a Villainous Breakdown, he takes it up several notches as he foams at the mouth, gesticulates like the lunatic he is, howls with animalistic fury and chews the scenery to smithereens.
• Last-Name Basis: Miya switches from calling Runa 'Runa-chan' to 'Houraisen' after the latter sides with Naito, and it's clear by the italics that she put as much withering contempt into the word as she can muster.
• Light Is Not Good: The Flock, despite first appearances. They are the ones who started the outbreak to begin with.
• Lipstick Lesbian: All five of the main characters, to varying degrees. The one who comes closest to averting this is Mai, and even then she just has a few boyish tendencies.
• Louis Cypher: Danica gives us two examples of this for the price of one: not only do we have the "Louis Cypher" in her last name and alias, but her first name translates to 'Morning Star'. Sure enough, she's Lucifer.
• Lust: Yuuna is infamous in Sono Hanabira as being probably the most perverted of the cast, and while she keeps her hormones under control for the story (there's a time and a place for everything), three of her late-story demons reflect her true nature: Lilith, Asmodeus, and Mother Harlot.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Or in this case, Mad Fundie's Plain-Looking Granddaughter. Colette looks to be shaping up to be this: while she initially served the Flock without question, she called her grandfather out on Day 4 after her tangle with Matador, due to his stubborn insistence on keeping up the act, while the truth is that the Flock's lost control of the situation and people are dying left and right. Phillips shouts her down, though, and she convinces herself that he knows what he's doing. Ultimately, it's shown that her loyalty to the Flock far outweighs any goodness in her heart, making her Daddy's Little Villain instead, though she turns on Phillips when he goes insane with the intent to follow the Flock's mission on her own.
• Meaningful Name: Danica Louis. On top of the Louis and 'Cypher' connection, her first name can be translated as 'Morning Star'. Sure enough, she's actually Lucifer.
• Oh, Crap!: When Yuuna sees a bunch of Flock members coming at them after they've outed themselves as Demon Tamers.
  Yuuna: Oh my...!
  • A humungous one from everyone present on Day 4. Colette is understandably off-put when she and the others are dragged into a Demon's Domain. But the big one, complete with Precision F-Strike, happens when they meet the demon who created the Domain: MATADOR THE FIEND.
  • Nanami usually expresses this by covering her mouth with her hands in shock.
• Operation: [Blank]: Mai is the one to declare the missions the girls go on: unfortunately, she's not too creative with the names, seeing as how she literally just calls them 'Operation: Literally-Whatever-Their-Objective-Is'.
• Order Versus Chaos: But of course: Law in this case is represented by The Flock, and Chaos is represented by Naito and his Yakuza, and in true Megaten fashion neither is all that pleasant.
• Papa Wolf: Reo's father is introduced fist-first when he decks a paparazzi harassing his daughter after the outbreak is over and everyone escapes. Her mom appears shortly after, following her husband's example and giving the paparazzi a verbal beatdown.
• The Power of Hate: Demons in general draw on the violent feelings of their masters: the stronger the feelings of animosity their masters feel toward their opponents, the more savagely the demon will fight.
• Precision F-Strike: Mai usually doesn't curse, but she makes it count when she punches out a defeated Phillips. She lets out what's described as a 'disjointed stream of obscenities' as she's beating him to a pulp, though, but the story doesn't go into details.
  Mai: Fuck! YOU!"
• Pre-Climax Climax: Mai and Reo make love the night before the Final Battle. It's especially poignant by the fact Reo's the one who instigates it: she's usually one to let Mai take the lead.
• The Magnificent: Kaiwan, verbatum.
• Manipulative Bastard: Lucifer, as is normal for his character. From the word 'go', he's in control of the entire situation. The Flock's ambitions never had a prayer of coming to pass: the only reason the outbreak played out at all is so Lucifer could fish for Godslayers on top of making The Flock and by extension his great enemy look like lying, bloodthirsty idiots.
• The Mole: Cypher, aka Danica Louis, turns out to be a member of The Flock.
• Monster Protection Racket: The true nature of the Flock's plan: stop the demon outbreaks they start to make themselves look like heroes, while holding the looming threat of outbreaks over everyone else to enforce their rule. After all, if somewhere doesn't lick their boots, what reason do they have to stop any outbreaks that could...crop up?
• Mysterious Backer: 'Cypher,' who gave the girls and the other Demon Tamers the Summoning programs.
• Noble Bigot: A very dark example with Naito. It's honestly hard to tell which is more frightening: his perception of all minorities everywhere as helpless, pathetic Woobies with deep-seated hatred of the privileged that will explode into violence if given the means, or the fact he admires such a thing.
• Not What I Signed on For: Colette turns on her grandfather when he reveals his intentions to use the angels to annihilate Kazamino to make an example of it.
  Colette: We didn't sign up... to butcher the innocent!
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The girls are mentioned to have battled Ghost Q on their trip back from the hospital, but the fight itself was skipped over.
• Onrushing Army: The final battle in front of the hospital begins with Tomohisa's Tamers and Naito and Colette's followers charging at each other with no regard for tactics, devolving into a chaotic mess in seconds. Justified: thanks to the Fog of War Colette had accidentally created, neither side even knew each other were there until they were right on top of each other, and had met each other in an open parking lot: there was no time for coming up with intricate tactics for either side. The 'charge' covered a few feet and came off as the result of a Blast Out. Not to mention the 'armies' in question mainly consisted of frightened civilians who had the Demon Summoning Program dropped into their laps: 'charge' and 'retreat' were in all likelihood the most advanced tactics they could learn on such short notice.
• Orochi: One of Nakazawa's demons: it doesn't get much exposure, but its attacks mainly consist of randomly-fired Sword Beams from blades that come out of its mouths.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Tomohisa is initially skeptical of the girls and their plan to use the Server to end the outbreak in one fell swoop, mainly because they themselves had no idea if it would work; he tells them that he can't help them unless he has solid proof that the Server is worth rallying his troops for. Once Cypher provides said proof, he is fully willing to help.
• Red Shirt: The Flock soldiers. They don't die like rats, per-say, and there were a number of occasions where they actually save the heroes, but they're still ultimately cannon fodder. They really start dropping like flies when they're outed as the bad guys and become the story's Mooks.
• Rousing Speech: Tomohisa gives one before the Final Battle.
  Tomohisa: Our deadline is noon tomorrow. Once that happens, whoever controls the Server will decide the fate of the city. And we're going to make damn sure it'll be us! Our lives were ruined by those Flock bastards, the demons killed the people we loved, and we're gonna make every last one of them sorry they ever stepped foot in Kazamino! Gods, demons, terrorists and Yakuza thugs...they are not welcome here! Kazamino is our city! SO LET'S TAKE IT BACK!
• Satanic Archetype: Father Phillips in the classical sense, considering Lucifer is an unambiguous good guy in this story. A Manipulative Bastard who hates humanity? Check. Portrayed as and later becomes an Angel of Light? Check. Declares himself above God Almighty and wants to take His place? Check. Decides at one point to unleash demons on the earth for the sake of wiping it clean? Sounds like something Old Scratch would do. Prideful? Oh, you have NO idea.
• Satan Is Good: Lucifer gets one of the nicest portrayals he's ever gotten in a Megaten story: despite being somewhat smug and a bit of a Troll, he's with humanity every step of the way, and rather than causing Hell on Earth all he wants is to destroy God's reputation so that humans turns away from Him and walks their own pat, and beneath the smugness he's actually not so unfriendly.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Averted, at least at the moment, with Phillips. He wears a priest's stole, sure, but he's a feeble old man who needs a cane and has trouble even standing up, and usually sits in the background commanding the Flock. Day 5 reveals he has a few inhuman abilities, however, such as telekinesis and teleportation, so this may not last. Sure enough, he engages the girls in angel-powered physical combat in the final battle.
• Screaming Warrior: Reo punctuates her demon's attacks with her own battle-cries.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Naito, when the Flock blow up a door out of nowhere.
• Sequel Hook: Gaiden hook, rather, but the last chapter ends with a teaser for Risa and Miya's adventures, which happened over the same week.
• Share the Male Pain: Girls they may be, but Mai and her friends all cringe when Sara's demon punches Phillips full force in the family jewels.
• Shout-Out:
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica shout-outs permeate the story: the city is named Kazamino, and a number of Original Characters have names that relate to the series (Taichi Tomohisa, Gen Nakazawa). Risa◊ is a character with pink hair who uses a bow and arrow wielding demon, while her girlfriend Miya◊ is a girl with long black hair who uses a demon with a big clock face in its design: parallels between their uncanny resemblance to Madoka and Homura respectively, and for bonus points she wields a 'sidearm' in the form of a golf club, like Homura did at the beginning of her career.. Although she stumbles on the name, Sara likens a Demon's Domain to a Witch's Labyrinth.
  • Tomohisa's Asura, a huge, muscular lug of a demon, grabs Naito's Loki by the leg and slams him repeatedly against the ground during their fight.
• Sequential Boss: The final battle against Phillips is the girls vs. Archangel Michael, then Phillips himself, then finally Phillips possessing Metatron's body.
• Sex for Solace: Nanami instigates this with Yuuna at the height of her breakdown after learning the Flock's true nature. At the very least, they're an established couple and it's hardly their first time.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: The first two times sex happens in the story, the narration completely cuts away: the first time, Nanami and Yuuna are about to begin and it immediately goes to Mai and the others downstairs. The second time, when Mai and Reo are about to make love, the chapter ends. The third time is just a narration of what happened between the end of the outbreak and Mai's departure for Kamihama and doesn't go into any detail about her and Reo.
• Shock and Awe: Kaiwan and Sara's Gagyson
• Signature Mon: In keeping with the spirit of Shin Megami Tensei, Demons usually don't have the staying power to become 'signature', being fused for new ones to keep up with the Power Creep. That said, a few Demons fit the bill in one way or another, most notably Mai's Matador: she gets the Fiend on the fourth day of the outbreak and it's her ace-in-the-hole right to the the Final Battle against Phillips.
  • Sara may not have a single demon like Matador that she becomes known for, but she always, always has at least one 'Jack' on her team: Jack Frost, Pyro Jack, Frost Ace, Black Frost, and finally Demonee-Ho. That's commitment, right there.
• Sinister Minister: Father Phillips. Whether he was always the slavering monster the girls face at the end or he simply broke under the weight of his collapsing plan, he was still all-to-willing to unleash a demon outbreak on Kazamino and indirectly kill scores of people for the sake of his schemes.
• Slapstick: Risa and Miya's break-in to return the food they had stolen ends with a catastrophic chain of physical comedy straight out of The Three Stooges: Nanami blinds them (and herself) with Horus, and all three proceed to bumble around in a panic, crashing into things and each other. By the time Yuuna and the others dash downstairs, Risa has slugged her girlfriend in the face and run headlong into a cabinet, while Nanami slipped on a golf club and crashed down on her butt.
• The Sociopath: Beneath his charismatic, avuncular facade, Father Phillips is smug and contemptuous, utterly devoid of empathy, a scheming Consummate Liar, and the owner of a colossal god complex.
• Something Only They Would Say: Danica leaves the girls with the phrase "best of luck to you", the same phrase that Cypher uses to end all of their messages, in order to hint that they're one and the same.
• Spanner in the Works: Risa and Miya's decision to return some of the food they stole from the main characters ends up being the impetus for the girls turning the tables on the Flock.
• Spit Take: Reo spews a mouthful of water because of Phillips's poor choice of words at one point. Sara happens to be in the line of fire.
• Spotting the Thread: The series of events that lead the girls to discover the Flock's true nature happens completely by accident. Mai notices a strange device on the arm of a dead Flock member, and inspects it more or less on a whim, revealing that it's a COMP with the Demon Summoning Program: the same Summoning Program that kicked off the outbreak. Mai realizes that this means the Flock had it first, and thus may have used it to start the outbreak. She uses this knowledge to bluff Phillips into telling a bald-faced lie about it and cement her suspicions.
• Starter Villain: Kaiwan is the first genuine threat the girls encounter, killing a Flock member right in front of Sara and one more offscreen earlier in the story. He even manages to take down one of their demons for the first time, and they ultimately defeat him through guile rather than sheer force.
• Stress Vomit: Nanami throws up when she sees Saint Michael's Girls Academy destroyed, and smells people who she very well could know rotting within.
• Stupid Evil: Brother Chick of the Flock is an utter slave to his bloodlust and cruelty, and it comes back to bite him several times: he sadistically drags out his fight with Mai and her friends, letting them formulate an escape plan, and then later tries to outright kill a fellow Flock member right in front of Phillips. This gets him Blown Across the Room, and he's almost immediately back on his feet and clearly ready to attack Phillips himself! Luckily, Phillips manages to scare him into backing off.
• Supporting Leader: Tomohisa takes over the anti-Flock operations after the girls join up with him: as a policeman, he's an authority figure more people are likely to rally behind than a bunch of high-school kids, and he's more combat-savvy in general to boot. But even though the girls end up deferring to him for orders, the resistance ultimately hinges on them, and Tomohisa has the Tamers Hold the Line while the girls take the fight to Phillips.
• Technicolor Death: Run-of-the-mill demons disintegrate into black smoke when killed, but 'boss-class' demons like Kaiwan explode into a column of dark energy that lingers for a few seconds before fading.
• Telescoping Staff: The Flock's weapon of choice is a collapsible baton.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lucifer gives one to Colette at the end of the story that completely tears her personality to shreds: despite being genuinely friendly and having no ill will toward the victims of the outbreak, she's still able to endanger and lie to them, all the while considering herself a good person. If anything, this makes her one of the worst members of the Flock, rather than being the Token Good Teammate of them. It cuts so deeply that Colette's faith is completely shattered, leaving her with no will to fight.
• The Social Darwinist: Naito, the leader of the Yakuza, is a variation of the meritocratic variety. He has the basic idea of life being a struggle for survival and the strongest one, ie. the one who survives the struggle and rises to the top being most deserving of rule. However, he is also of the idea that the deck is stacked against certain groups of people, and no matter how strong they are, they'll never have the chance to make something of themselves since it's so grossly and unnaturally unfair. Hence his plans to spread the Summoning Program to everyone, cause a societal meltdown, give everyone an equal chance to rise from the ashes, and see how things turn out.
• Took a Level in Badass: At the beginning of the outbreak, the girls are scared citizens just learning how to use the Demon Summoning Program that was dropped on them. By the end, they're seasoned Demon Tamers who slew an Archangel and the Voice of God among countless other foes.
• True Companions: The girls.
• Tranquil Fury: Yuuna's anger usually manifests as this: when Nanami's hurt, on the other hand, she lapses into Unstoppable Rage.
  • Reo does this when she finds out Mai had been keeping the Flock's true nature from them all. Especially chilling considering she's no stranger to angry ranting and raving. Mai notes that the look she's giving her is just that: not a Death Glare, just a look, and Mai considers it the scariest expression she had ever seen Reo wear.
  • Reo lapses into it again after finding out Mai had been taken by the Flock because Kaede left her behind (by Mai's own insistance). Then she has a total meltdown.
  • Brother Chick uses this to horrifying effect, cheerfully condescending one moment, then deathly calm and murderous the next, then right back to cheerful, often within the span of a single sentence. It only serves to highlight how crazy he is. Best highlighted after Brother Ethan calls him out on his reckless actions: Chick bends his finger back, then chokeslams him onto a table, slowly squeezing the life out of his own comrade while scolding him the way one would a dog who had an accident on the floor.
• Tsundere: Reo, Reo, REO.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Reo's definitely not the thinking type: her 'strategy' for fighting is brute force, either with mighty physical attackers or powerful magic nukers. Her favorite Race of demon seems to be Toukis, who can sacrifice health to temporarily gain an explosive increase to physical power.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Yuuna flips her shit when a demon injures Nanami. Her demon Ogun starts slaughtering demons left and right, while Yuuna herself is so furious she hauls off and punches one of the Waira they're fighting in the face herself.
  • When she gets her hands on Phillips, Mai demonstrates the difference between her girlfriend's loud, blustering huff-and-puff anger and true murderous wrath as she unleashes an absolute beatdown on the target of her ire.
• Verbal Tic: Brother Chick sometimes draaaaaaaaws out his words as part of his Faux Affably Evil persona. He drops the habit when he gets angry.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Naito, who intends to distribute the Summoning Program to everyone, so that they can bring their own ambitions to life through use of it. As it stands, he doesn't seem to be getting anything out of it: it's more philosophically driven than through any desire of his own to be The Man Behind the Man or be owed favors. He's less than pleased when he meets people (ie. the protagonists) who don't want anything to do with his scheme.
• Villains Want Mercy: The dreaded Hastur's last words before getting demolished by the heroes are: "No! Wait...!"
• Villain with Good Publicity: The most dangerous thing about The Flock: Phillips's gambit revolves around using a Monster Protection Racket to both win approval and intimidate those who don't want to fall in line. Naturally Lucifer's plan was to make them look like incompetent idiots by sabotaging the server, then reveal the truth (backed up with strong enough Tamers to survive the resulting Villainous Breakdown), and nearly overnight God's approval ratings plunge to single digits as the truth of His servants' atrocities come to light.
• Villainous Breakdown: The last two chapters involve Phillips's spectacular descent into insanity. The constant setbacks for the Flock finally push the mad preacher into embracing his inner cartoon villain, his motivations rapidly deteriorating from 'take over the world and rule it as a theocracy' to 'exterminate humanity and OVERTHROW THE GREAT WILL.'
• Villainous Underdog: The Flock becomes this, thanks to Lucifer's manipulations pulling the rug out from them. By the time Mai and the others turn their guns toward them, the Flock is demoralized, exhausted, surrounded and outnumbered, and would probably surrender outright if Phillips wasn't scarier than anything the Tamers could do. Even Phillips's intents to exterminate all the innocents in the city wouldn't mean nearly as much as he hoped, since the JSDF evacuated the refugees after realizing the force field around the city was gone, leaving only the Tamers.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Reo and Sara get along quite well, considering. The two rag on each other, but Reo usually doesn't like to talk to other people, and the fact she's making an effort to connect with Sara really says something. And by connect, they're constantly comparing how many demons they can kill. When Sara is badly injured by Brother Chick, Reo actually calls out her name in a panic.
• Vocal Dissonance: Brother Chick's a mountain of muscle with a huge beard, but he has a surprisingly high voice.
• Voice of the Legion: The demons all have this, indicated by italics in their speech.
• Walking Shirtless Scene:
  • Naito, in a way: he wears a pinstriped purple suit, but it's open enough near the top to show off a lot of his tattooed chest.
  • Phillips flings his shirt away before engaging the girls personally during their final battle.
• War Is Glorious: Arguably the cornerstone of Naito's beliefs. "Talk problems out and try to come to a compromise? Peaceful answers to social issues? Pshaw! Give everyone superweapons, have them slaughter each other, and whoever doesn't die is in the right!"
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Naito can best be described as thus, fitting his role as a Chaos individual. He wants to make sure everyone 'has a chance to make their dreams come true' without being held back by a corrupt system by unleashing the Demon Summoning Program upon the world and turning everything into a ginormous battle royale. The Flock appear to be this as well: hoping to use the demons to scare people into compliance in the name of peace.
• Western Terrorists: There's no other way to describe The Flock after the reveal that they started the whole outbreak to begin with.
• Wham Episode: Day 5 reveals the existence of the Demon Summoning Server, establishes the Flock as the girls' enemies, introduces the Archangels, sheds light on Phillips' true plans and shows he has a few strange powers, adds Kaede as a member of the group, and ends with Mai captured by the Flock.
• Wham Line:
  Father Phillips: "We don't exactly use the Demon Summoning Program, Sawaguchi-san!"
• What the Hell, Hero?: While Sara and Nanami are shocked to learn that the Flock are behind the outbreak, Reo is apoplectic that Mai and Yuuna knew and didn't tell them, giving her the silent treatment and Death Glares for the rest of the chapter.
  • A concise one from Yuuna when Mai kicks Phillips while he's down. It's her tone that gets the point across.
  Yuuna: Mai-san!
• The Worf Effect: Zig-Zagged with Matador. While he was pivotal in the girls' escape from Brother Chick and is far and away Mai's strongest Demon, he's clearly gotten a Redemption Demotion; Naito blasts him out of the air with contemptuous ease, and Raphael manages to slay him with just as little effort.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Yuuna's Zaou-Gongen manages to smash Anael with a German Suplex.
• 0% Approval Rating: Phillips by the end of the story has gone so bonkers that his last few remaining goons follow him out of fear more than loyalty. About the only one who agrees with him by that point is Chick, who's honestly just as messed up as he is. Even Colette, his own granddaughter, has turned on him by that point. Thanks to Lucifer's machinations and the atrocities committed by the Forces of Law, YHVH is hit by this in this particular reality at the end.

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