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—It's mine, you damn apes! —Kaiju roared, dodging a desperate swipe from Matsuda with quick footwork.
—Not a chance, Kaiju! I've been dreaming about this melon bread since first-period algebra! —Issei shouted, diving across the cafeteria table with his arms outstretched toward the coveted plastic-wrapped bread resting on the tray.
Motohama, adjusting his glasses with one finger, tried to flank them.
—Strategy is everything, idiots. While you fight like barbarians, intellect prevails...
Before Motohama could reach the bread, Kaiju did not use Purple for telekinesis, nor Red to increase his physical strength. He simply used the basic principles of the Turtle School. With one fluid movement, Kaiju grabbed Issei by the collar of his jacket, used him as a human shield to block Motohama, and with his free hand snatched the melon bread from the table in a microsecond.
Issei and Motohama collided head-on, falling to the cafeteria floor in a tangle of limbs and groans of pain.
—Crushing victory —Kaiju declared, unwrapping the bread with a triumphant smile and taking a large bite—. Mmm. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. The taste of triumph.
Matsuda, who was still trying to recover from the initial dodge, dropped to his knees, pounding the floor with his fist in an exaggerated anime defeat pose.
—Damn it! His reflexes aren't normal! It's like he can read our movements!
—It's called being in shape, Matsuda. You should try it sometime instead of wasting your energy reading adult magazines under the table —Kaiju joked, sitting down in one of the free chairs and chewing peacefully.
Issei got up from the floor, dusting off his uniform, and sat across from him with an expression of pure misery.
—Easy for you to say, Kaiju. Look at you. You've got the muscles of an athlete, that cool scar over your eye that makes the third-year girls look at you in the hallways, and you live with Sylvie. Sylvie! —Issei grabbed his head, on the verge of tears—. That girl is an angel! She makes you lunch, fixes your shirt collar... She even waits for you at the entrance! When will the day come when I, Hyoudou Issei, have a beautiful girlfriend who treats me with that much affection?
Kaiju almost choked on the melon bread. He coughed a couple of times, hitting his chest, completely ignoring the immense cosmic irony of Issei's words. He knew nothing about Amano Yuuma, nor about the fateful sunset awaiting the brown-haired boy. To the reincarnated Author with no memories of the canon, Issei was just a desperate virgin.
—Relax, Issei —Kaiju said, swallowing the bread—. I'm sure the universe has someone very... special reserved for you. Just be patient. And maybe stop spying on the kendo girls.
—Speaking of that! —Motohama jumped in, immediately regaining his composure and approaching the table with a perverted, conspiratorial smile—. The melon bread is already history, but I have something much better. Grade-S classified information.
Issei and Matsuda's ears sharpened instantly. Even Kaiju, despite his stoic attitude, stopped eating lunch and raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
—What are you talking about, four-eyes? —Issei asked in an excited whisper.
Motohama looked both ways to make sure no one was listening, then leaned over the table.
—I discovered a structural flaw in the east wing of the old building. Specifically, in the back wall of the girls' swimming locker room. The swimming club has practice today at one.
And the crack... is at perfect eye level.
Silence fell over the table. Issei and Matsuda looked at each other. A spark of pure, unshakable, and stupid brotherhood shone in their eyes.
Kaiju let out a long sigh, bringing a hand to the bridge of his nose.
—You're a lost cause.
Those locker rooms are on the other side of campus. If we get caught, we'll be suspended.
—It's a risk I'm willing to take for romance, Kaiju! —Issei declared, standing up with almost religious fervor—. It's the swimming club! One-piece swimsuits! Water dripping down their curves!
Kaiju tried to maintain his frown, tried to keep alive the image of a tempered warrior, but the teenage mentality and the camaraderie of the Perverted Quartet were too strong a gravitational force.
—Ten minutes —Kaiju yielded, standing up with a sigh—. If we don't find the crack in ten minutes, we abort the mission.
—That's the spirit! —the three idiots celebrated in unison.
Five minutes later, the four of them were crouched behind dense bushes, pressed against the old wooden wall of the locker room building. And indeed, Motohama had not lied. There was a long crack in the rotten wood, right next to an old drainpipe.
The problem was that the crack was only wide enough for one person to look through at a time.
—I discovered it, I go first —Motohama whispered, trying to bring his face closer to the wood.
—No way! I'm the spiritual leader of this group, the pioneer of the harem! It's my turn! —Issei replied, grabbing Motohama by the collar of his uniform and pulling him back.
—Shut up, both of you, you'll get us discovered! —Matsuda hissed, trying to push Issei aside—. I have the best eyesight, let me assess the situation!
Kaiju, who was watching the pathetic miniature wrestling spectacle, felt a vein throb on his forehead.
—Move aside, insects —Kaiju muttered, sliding his hand out to push them away gently but with enough force to move them a meter back—. Let a professional assess the perimeter first to make sure there are no teachers inside.
Kaiju knelt down, ready to bring his one healthy eye closer to the crack and enjoy the promised "paradise."
But before he could lean the final centimeter, a small, soft, and dangerously delicate hand settled on his shoulder.
Kaiju's Ki did not warn him of any danger. His Divine Energy Concealment did not react to any supernatural threat. But his male preservation instinct screamed at him that he had just made a fatal mistake.
The teenager froze, slowly turning his head, millimeter by millimeter, swallowing hard.
Behind him stood Sylvie.
She wore Kuoh Academy's immaculate uniform, her grayish hair shining under the sun. She had an absolutely beautiful and sweet smile on her face... but her bright eyes had no light in them at all. It was the smile of a girl who had crossed the entire city looking for him and had just found him about to look through a hole into a girls' locker room.
Issei, Matsuda, and Motohama slowly backed away, pale as sheets of paper, sweating cold under the aura of silent disappointment emanating from the girl.
—Kai-ju~... —Sylvie sang, her voice as sweet as honey and as terrifying as the void of space—. What are you doing in the bushes? Recess is about to end.
—S-Sylvie... my love... —Kaiju stammered, raising his hands in surrender, his facade as a rough warrior and Creator of the multiverse collapsing like a house of cards—. I... we... Motohama lost a... a contact lens. Yes. We were looking for his lens on the ground.
Motohama nodded frantically, sweating buckets.
—Y-yes! I'm practically blind without it!
Sylvie did not erase her smile. She simply slid her hand from Kaiju's shoulder to his ear, and with a gentle but firm pinch that made him let out a small whimper, forced him to stand up.
—How considerate of you —Sylvie said, pulling Kaiju by the ear and forcing him to walk out of the bushes—. But I'm sure your friends can look for it by themselves. You and I have to go to history class, remember? And you promised we would review my notes.
—O-Ow! Sylvie, don't pull so hard, my reflexes don't work against you! —Kaiju complained comically, letting himself be dragged away by the fragile-looking girl without offering even a gram of physical resistance, his pride shattered before the eyes of his friends.
Issei, still lying in the dirt among the bushes, watched as Sylvie took Kaiju away, scolding him quietly while affectionately dusting off his jacket.
Issei slammed his fist against the ground, biting his lip as tears of envy began to flow again.
—Lucky bastard! —Issei whined—. Even when he gets caught spying, his girlfriend drags him by the ear with love! I wish some girl would get mad at me like that!
Unaware of the brown-haired boy's existential crisis and the supernatural mysteries still sleeping in Kuoh, Kaiju let himself be dragged down the hallway, surrendering to his school life. His fictional universe had spawned the most destructive power imaginable, but at that moment, his greatest weakness was a gray-haired girl who was unwilling to share his attention with anyone else.
...
The night in Kuoh was freezing, but the atmosphere between the Gremory and Sitri peerages was red-hot.
Leaping between rooftops at a speed imperceptible to the human eye, both groups moved in perfect formation. They had detected the energy signature of a high-class Rogue Devil, an anomaly that required the immediate intervention of both heiresses. After the recent incidents with the city's mysterious "Ghost," Rias and Sona were not willing to let anyone else snatch control of their territory from them.
—It's three blocks away, in the abandoned warehouse sector! —Akeno warned, flying just a few meters above the ground beside Tsubaki.
—Kiba, Koneko, flank from the left! Saji, hold the rear with Sona's team! —Rias ordered, her crimson hair waving as she prepared her Power of Destruction.
They accelerated at maximum speed, turning the last corner of the industrial district, ready to unleash a combined attack. Rias raised her hand, Sona adjusted her glasses while preparing a restrictive water spell, and Kiba unsheathed his demonic sword.
But, once again, they arrived too late.
Both peerages skidded across the cracked asphalt, stopping dead. The scene before them left them completely paralyzed.
The warehouse was not merely destroyed; its entire roof was missing and one of the main walls had been reduced to pulverized rubble. And in the center of the devastation, there was no invisible "Ghost." There were five titans.
Five monstrous and unknown creatures surrounded the unrecognizable remains of the Rogue Devil. An orange bipedal dragon with a flaming tail released wisps of smoke from its jaws. Beside it, a land shark with blue scales sharpened its claws, flanked by an armored steel beast, a green dinosaur with rocky armor, and a colossal crab snapping a claw the size of a car.
Team Alpha, in its fullest expression of physical lethality.
Sona and Rias held their breath. The physical pressure emanating from those five beasts was suffocating, dense, and absolutely savage. There was no magic in them, only primal brutality.
Sensing the arrival of the devils, the Garchomp (Tiburoncin) slightly turned its heavy head. Its reptilian eyes, cold and instinctive, glanced sideways at the two peerages. Kiba tensed his sword, and Koneko adopted a defensive stance, expecting the beast's impact.
But the attack never came.
Suddenly, five thin and precise rays of red light descended directly from the night sky. The light enveloped the five creatures simultaneously, absorbing them in the blink of an eye and reducing them to echoes of energy that disappeared into the air.
—Spatial summoning magic? —Sona murmured, completely bewildered by the color and nature of the light.
Guided by the origin of the red rays, the gazes of all the devils present rose toward the sky.
There, floating dozens of meters above the destroyed warehouse and outlined against the light of the full moon, stood a young man. He wore dark clothes and had a pale scar crossing his face.
Rias narrowed her eyes, trying to process what she was seeing. The boy was suspended in the air.
He had no bat wings. He had no black-feathered wings, nor white ones. There was not a single magic circle beneath his feet to justify his levitation either. He was simply there, defying the laws of gravity as if the sky were solid ground.
However, the fearsome and mysterious "master" of the beasts was not assessing his rivals, nor preparing for an epic battle. In fact, the MC was so distracted eating a kinako bread filled with manjar that he did not notice the presences below him.
Kaiju chewed slowly, closing his one healthy eye as he savored the perfect combination of toasted soybean flour and the overwhelming sweetness of the manjar dripping from the corner of his lips. He was in his own world, enjoying his sugary delicacy in the middle of the cold night, royally ignoring the fact that ten of the city's most important devils were staring at him with a mixture of fear and confusion.
Still chewing, he brought two fingers to his forehead.
Before Rias could shout an order or Sona could cast a tracking spell, the boy disappeared. Without a sound of wind, without a magical flash. He simply erased himself from the fabric of reality without leaving the slightest trace.
Sepulchral silence once again took possession of the warehouse ruins, leaving the two heiresses of the Underworld staring at the empty sky, dealing with the disturbing fact that the most dangerous being in their territory had just ignored them completely.
...
The afternoon sun bathed the courtyards of Kuoh Academy in an orange tone worthy of the climax of any samurai film. And, in fact, the scene unfolding behind the club building was not far from being a feudal massacre.
—Take this, perverted scum! —Murayama roared, swinging her shinai (bamboo sword) with the fury of a thousand suns.
—Let this teach you never to come near our locker room again! —Katase seconded, launching a brutal thrust.
BAM! CRACK! THUD!
The sounds of bamboo striking flesh and bone echoed rhythmically, accompanied by a symphony of sharp, pathetic screams that would have made any Spartan warrior cry from pity.
The self-proclaimed Perverted Quartet had finally been ambushed and cornered against the chain-link fence. Well, saying "Quartet" was being generous. The reality was that only three of them were receiving divine punishment.
—GAAAAH! My arms! —Issei cried, rolling on the ground in a fetal position while trying to protect his face—. I need my hands for noble purposes! Mercy!
—The pain...! My muscles weren't prepared for this level of tension! —Matsuda bellowed, receiving a direct whack to the back that made him kiss the grass.
—They'll break my glasses! Without them, my IQ drops to Hyoudou levels! —Motohama shrieked, running in circles before being knocked down by a tactical sweep from one of the first-year girls.
At the very epicenter of the chaos, surrounded by rising dust, screams of agony, and female fury, stood Kaiju.
The young reincarnated god was standing with his legs slightly apart in a completely relaxed stance. In his right hand, he held half of a Melon Bread he had strategically saved from the cafeteria.
Murayama, blinded by rage, spun on her heels and launched a horizontal slash directly toward Kaiju's head.
"Too much tension in the shoulders. The angle is predictable and her center of gravity is too far forward," Kaiju's martial mind analyzed in a fraction of a millisecond.
Kaiju did not even blink. He simply tilted his neck back exactly 3.2 centimeters.
The shinai cut through the air, passing a millimeter from his nose and slightly messing up his bangs. Taking advantage of the brief silence left by the whistle of the sword, Kaiju took a crisp, loud bite of his melon bread. Crunch!
—Huh?! —Murayama's eyes went wide, losing her balance from the force of her own failed attack.
—I'll handle it! —Katase shouted, jumping from the left to deliver a downward blow directly to the one-eyed boy's shoulder.
Kaiju sighed through his nose while chewing. He slightly bent his right knee, lowering his weight a couple of centimeters, and turned his torso to the side. Katase's weapon harmlessly struck the chain-link fence behind him, producing a loud metallic noise.
With the same fluidity with which he breathed, Kaiju brought his left hand to his chin to catch a small crumb of sugar that was about to fall from his bread, returning it to his mouth with extreme delicacy.
—This... this is unheard of... —Motohama whispered from the ground, adjusting his broken glasses with trembling hands. He looked at Kaiju as if he were witnessing the Second Coming—. He dodges with one hundred percent efficiency! Without wasting movement!
—He's the God of Evasion! —Issei cried, receiving another whack to the ribs for getting distracted—. Teach me your secret, Kaiju! Use it to save us!
—I'm busy, Issei —Kaiju replied with his mouth half-full—. If I move too fast, the sugar from the crust will fall off. This bread is a structural work of art; it requires concentration.
—Are you making fun of us?! —Murayama roared, a vein throbbing on her forehead.
From that moment on, the girls of the Kendo Club forgot about the trio of idiots on the ground and focused all their anger and frustration on the mysterious transfer student who continued snacking in the middle of the battlefield.
A true storm of wood began. Vertical slashes, thrusts, sweeps. Four girls attacked at the same time from different angles.
But Kaiju seemed to be a ghost. Or a leaf carried by the wind.
He took a tiny step to the right and two swords collided with each other. He casually crouched down to scratch his knee and a horizontal slash whistled over his head.
He raised his arm to take another bite of his bread, and the gap left under his armpit was exactly where a harmless thrust passed.
He was not using Ki. He was not using celestial powers. He was simply using the basic fundamentals of dodging that he had learned on Papaya Island, adapted for the most important task in the universe: not dropping his food.
—Stay still! —Katase shouted, panting from the effort and sweating buckets.
—Katase-san, your grip is too stiff in your left hand —Kaiju commented casually, swallowing a bite—. If you relax your wrist, you'll gain more speed in the arc of your strike. Ah, and Murayama-san, you're dragging your supporting foot.
—WE DON'T NEED ADVICE FROM A PERVERT!! —both of them shouted in unison, launching a final synchronized and desperate attack.
Kaiju finished the last piece of melon bread just in time. He sucked his thumb to clean off the remaining sugar and, with a movement as casual as someone avoiding a puddle of water, pivoted on both heels. He slipped through the minimal space left between Murayama and Katase.
The momentum of the two girls caused them to crash head-on into each other comically.
They fell onto the grass in a tangle of bamboo swords and wrinkled uniforms, completely exhausted, panting and without the strength to lift their arms.
Kaiju remained standing at the edge, brushing imaginary crumbs off his school jacket.
His breathing was perfectly calm.
On the ground, Issei, Matsuda, and Motohama, covered in bruises, bumps, and red marks, lifted their heads toward their new "friend," looking at him with a mixture of absolute terror and religious devotion.
—You... you're not human... —Issei murmured.
—I'm a growing teenager who knows how to appreciate carbohydrates, Hyoudou —Kaiju replied, putting his hands in his pockets—. Anyway, I think the Kendo Club's training session is over for today. I'm going home.
—Don't leave us here! —Matsuda begged, trying to crawl.
—Those who survive, learn. See you tomorrow in math —Kaiju said with a sideways smile, turning around and walking away toward the school exit.
As he walked under the sunset light, Kaiju let out a small sigh. It had been fun, in its own strange way. Normal high school life was full of whacks, screams, and sweet bread. It was certainly a pleasant change compared to disintegrating Rogue Devils.