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The walk home had never felt so long and miserable for Hyoudou Issei.
The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, bathing the streets of Kuoh in an orange hue that, instead of bringing him peace, made him feel sick. Kaiju's words on the rooftop kept echoing in his head like a hammering refrain: "You are a demon. That is the only truth."
Issei had tried to deny it all day, but his own body betrayed him. He remembered how awful he had felt when he left home that very morning. He had realized that, lately, the sun had been giving him a bad feeling. Literally, the sunlight felt as if it were piercing through his skin, and he could not stand it. Even his routine had been ruined, because the morning sun was completely bad for him and he could not wake up in the morning.
Not even his friends' distractions worked. When Motohama approached him in the classroom, asking with his typical perverted smile, "Hey, buddy. How was the porn video I lent you? It was good material, right?", Issei could barely avoid eye contact. His mind was consumed by fear. The black wings Kaiju had forced out of his back were irrefutable proof that Yuuma-chan had really murdered him in cold blood.
Submerged in his existential crisis, Issei did not realize that his feet had carried him, almost by inertia, toward the very same park where everything had ended the previous night.
The place was deserted. The lights of the lampposts flickered weakly, casting elongated shadows over the water fountain.
The brown-haired boy swallowed and turned around to leave quickly. He did not want to be there. He wanted to go to his room, hide under the sheets, and pretend everything was a nightmare.
"Well, well... if it isn't yesterday's brat."
The raspy, deep voice, loaded with murderous intent, froze Issei's blood.
A few meters away, emerging from between the shadows of the trees, an adult man appeared. He wore a long trench coat, a fedora that partially hid his face, and a twisted smile that showed his teeth.
"I sensed a disgusting demonic aura wandering through my territory and came to eliminate it," the man said, stopping and tilting his head curiously. "But what a surprise. You are the human trash Raynare eliminated last night. How are you still alive?"
Issei stepped back, stumbling over his own feet. His heart began pounding at a thousand beats per hour.
"R-Raynare?" Issei stammered, terror paralyzing his muscles. "A-Are you talking about Yuuma-chan? Who the hell are you?!"
"My name is Dohnaseek," the man replied, taking off his hat and giving a mocking bow. "I am a Fallen Angel. And I don't know what kind of demonic vermin revived you, brat, but I cannot allow one of Raynare's mistakes to keep breathing."
With a fluid movement, Dohnaseek extended his right hand.
Issei felt panic suffocating him as he relived his own murder. Immediately, a noise far heavier than the sound of the playground equipment rang out. That thing was making a lot of noise, and it appeared in his hand. Issei knew perfectly well what it was. That thing looked like a spear, and it was glowing with a lethal, chilling light.
"Damn it!" Issei shouted, turning on his heels and starting to run with all his strength.
"It's useless, demonic scum!" Dohnaseek mocked, raising the light spear above his head.
Issei ran blindly, but his legs, trembling from fear and lack of familiarity with his new body, failed him. He tripped over the edge of the park's stone steps and fell heavily onto the asphalt, scraping his hands and knees. He rolled onto his back just in time to see the Fallen Angel levitating a couple of meters above the ground, aiming directly at his chest.
"This time, make sure you stay dead."
Dohnaseek threw the light projectile with blinding speed.
Issei screamed, squeezing his eyes shut and raising his arms in a useless attempt to protect himself. His mind prepared for the impact, expecting the spear to pierce his stomach like the previous night, knowing that the hole in his stomach should be fatal.
But the impact never came.
A dry crash echoed through the air, followed by the sound of a shockwave that swept across the park, violently shaking the leaves of the trees.
Issei opened one eye, trembling from head to toe.
The lethal light spear had not touched his body. It was suspended in the air, or rather, its incandescent tip had been stopped dead just a few centimeters from Issei's face.
In front of him, with his back to the brown-haired boy, stood a figure in a dark school jacket. His fingers were closed firmly around the Fallen Angel's light spear, holding the lethal energy as if it were a simple plastic tube. With a slight and uninterested squeeze of his hand, Dohnaseek's sacred weapon cracked and shattered, dissipating into harmless sparks that fell onto the asphalt.
"I told you to act normal, Issei," Kaiju's stoic, familiar, and deathly bored voice rang out. "And here you are, about to let yourself get murdered again in the same park. You're a lost cause."
Dohnaseek, suspended a couple of meters in the air, opened his eyes wide. The petulance and cruelty on the Fallen Angel's face transformed into a mask of absolute disbelief.
"W-What?!" Dohnaseek stammered, his raspy voice breaking from the shock. "How the hell is a disgusting human capable of touching a weapon of light without his hands disintegrating?! Who do you think you are?!"
Kaiju did not answer with words. His face held an expression of absolute annoyance, as if he were dealing with an irritating fly instead of a supernatural assassin.
With a simple, slow, uninterested squeeze of his right hand, Kaiju crushed the spear. The construct of divine light cracked as if it were cheap glass, bursting into thousands of luminous particles that dissipated harmlessly into the night wind.
"Tsk..." Kaiju clicked his tongue, shaking the glowing dust from his fingers.
In the fraction of a second it took Dohnaseek to blink, the figure of the scarred teenager disappeared completely from his field of vision. There was no blur of speed, no magic circle; it was an instantaneous eradication of his presence.
Before the Fallen Angel could turn his head to search for him, a deafening crash shook the sky above the park.
CRAAAAACK!
Kaiju had reappeared twenty meters in the air, right at the edge of the isolation barrier Dohnaseek had raised so that no one would hear Issei's execution. With a fluid movement loaded with devastating physical strength, Kaiju launched a side kick directly against the invisible dome.
The impact was so titanic that the supernatural barrier shattered instantly. Space seemed to break into hexagonal pieces that fell like broken glass before evaporating, returning the sound of crickets and the distant wind of the city to the park.
Kaiju remained floating in the air without wings, looking down at Dohnaseek with sepulchral coldness.
"I don't like people dirtying the yard of my house with cheap barriers," Kaiju declared, his voice resonating with a density that made the air tremble.
"You arrogant brat!" Dohnaseek roared, materializing two additional light spears in his hands and preparing to throw them with all his fury. "I'm going to skewer you and that low-class demon!"
The Fallen Angel pulled his arm back, but the throw never happened.
With a micro-spatial jump that defied every law of motion, Kaiju appeared directly behind Dohnaseek. The Fallen Angel felt a gust of icy wind on the back of his neck, and primitive terror seized every cell in his body.
Without giving him time to react, Kaiju raised his arm and brought down a descending elbow strike with calculated brutality right between the Fallen Angel's shoulder blades.
BOOOOOOM!
The blow connected with the force of a meteorite. Dohnaseek spat out a mouthful of blood and shot downward, crashing into the park pavement. The impact generated a crater three meters in diameter; the asphalt lifted in giant chunks and a cloud of dust covered the area.
Issei, who was still lying on the ground only a few meters from the crater, covered his face with his arms, coughing from the dust and staring at the scene with his heart about to burst out of his chest. The quiet, stoic classmate he fought with over melon bread in the cafeteria had just humiliated a nightmare monster with a single blow.
Inside the crater, Dohnaseek groaned in agony. He felt as if his spine had splintered in multiple places. He could barely breathe, but his pride and survival instinct forced him to place his trembling hands on the broken asphalt, trying to rise onto his knees.
He barely managed to lift his head, stained with blood and dust.
In front of his face, only a few centimeters from his eyes, was Kaiju's open palm.
The teenager stood in front of the crater. In the center of his hand swirled a small sphere of energy that did not emit light, but seemed to devour it; a condensation of pure conceptual destruction that distorted the space around it.
Kaiju tilted his head slightly, looking at him with deep and absolute boredom.
"I'm a lazy guy, you know?" Kaiju murmured, his tone devoid of any epic emotion or righteous fury. "All I wanted tonight was to finish my kinako bread, go home, and see Sylvie. I wanted a quiet Friday."
Dohnaseek trembled, his eyes fixed on the sphere of annihilation pulsing before his face. He wanted to beg, wanted to summon his wings to flee, but the pressure emanating from the boy had him immobilized.
"But your companion had to make a mess the night before," Kaiju continued, his eyes darkening. "And you came to dirty my park to finish her incomplete job. Since she isn't here to clean up her trash, you'll have to pay the bill for her."
The sphere in Kaiju's palm began to emit a dull and terrifying hum.
"Disappear."
Kaiju did not raise his voice. There was no battle cry. He only pronounced a single word with the absolute authority of an executioner passing sentence.
"Hakai."
A flash of violet and black light blinded the park for a fraction of a second.
There was no explosion. There was no fire. The Fallen Angel Dohnaseek did not even have time to let out a scream of agony. His physical body, his clothes, his black-feathered wings, and even his spiritual energy signature disintegrated into microscopic particles that floated toward the night sky and were erased from existence.
The crater was left completely empty.
Kaiju lowered his hand and let out a long sigh, bringing his hand to the back of his neck to rub the tense muscles. Then he slowly turned his face toward Issei, who was still lying on the asphalt, mute and pale as a ghost.
"Get up, Issei," Kaiju ordered in his usual monotone. "And you'd better not say a single word about this tomorrow at school, or next time I'll let you get impaled."
The brown-haired boy remained sitting on the ground, pale, trembling, alternating his gaze between Kaiju and the smoking, empty crater where, three seconds earlier, there had been a monster willing to murder him.
"Well?" Kaiju said, raising an eyebrow. "Are you going to sit there all night, Hyoudou, or are you going to invite me to play video games at your house? That Hakai made me a little hungry, and I heard your mom makes good stew."
Issei opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, like a fish out of water, before finally finding his voice.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU, KAIJU?!"
Issei's scream was so sharp, powerful, and loaded with hysteria that Kaiju had to close his one eye and cover his ear with his pinky, grimacing in pain.
"Lower your voice, you'll wake up half the neighborhood," Kaiju complained, shaking his head to get rid of the ringing. "And to answer your dramatic question: I am an ordinary, normal high school student. I'm just a little more athletic than average."
Issei looked at him as if a second head had just grown out of him and started reciting poetry in Latin.
"Athle...?! Athletic?!" Issei stood up, frantically pointing at the smoking crater in the asphalt, then at the purple nothingness where the Fallen Angel had been, and finally at Kaiju. "Normal my ass! You caught a magic light spear with your bare hands and broke it like a breadstick! You made a hole in the street with your elbow! You disintegrated that bird guy in a trench coat by saying one word!"
Issei began walking in circles, grabbing his hair, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"Besides, you knew about demonic magic! You knew Rias-senpai and the president had dark energies! You knew everything and now you come tell me you're 'normal'! You are the real monster here! You're definitely an ancient god, or a supreme demon, or an alien, or...!"
Kaiju, feeling a headache approaching at the speed of light, could no longer endure his friend's shrieking. He raised his right hand and extended his open palm directly toward Issei's face. The exact same palm with which he had just erased Dohnaseek from existence.
The effect was instant.
Issei went silent. Pale as a sheet of paper, he covered his mouth with both hands, sweating buckets and nodding quickly, promising with his eyes that he would never say another word in his entire life if Kaiju spared his existence.
Kaiju sighed, lowering his hand. Trying to explain to this idiot his origins as the Creator of the Celestial Eyes, Tohka's AI, dimensional travel, and his training on Yardrat would take hours, and he really wanted to eat something.
But then, Kaiju remembered one small, beautiful, and vital detail about Issei's personality.
They were both otakus. They both read manga. And there was a universal language that transcended worlds, demons, and Fallen Angels.
A sideways, almost childish smile appeared on Kaiju's face. He slipped his hands into his pockets and walked a few steps to the center of the destroyed street.
"Alright, Hyoudou. Calm down for a second and use your brain," Kaiju said, looking at him over his shoulder. "You're a shonen manga fanatic, right? You know the classics."
Issei nodded slowly, still with his hands over his mouth, afraid of being disintegrated.
"Good. Then, instead of giving you a long and boring explanation about Ki control, spirituality, and the martial arts of the universe... I'm going to show it to you in your own language."
Kaiju slightly spread his legs, lowered his center of gravity, and flexed his arms, clenching his fists at either side of his waist.
"Watch and learn, rookie. Kaio-ken!"
BOOOOOOM!
The sound was like the engine of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier directly inside Issei's chest. Suddenly, an explosive, wild, dazzling aura of pure crimson-red energy erupted around Kaiju's body.
The air pressure changed so drastically that gravity in the street seemed to invert. Small pieces of asphalt, dust, and pebbles began to levitate around the young warrior in an antigravitational dance. The entire street trembled rhythmically, dramatically, and exaggeratedly, as if a category seven earthquake were shaking only that single block.
The intense red light illuminated the dark buildings of the neighborhood, giving Kaiju the appearance of a true and absolute god of destruction taken directly from a full-color manga panel.
Issei dropped his hands from his face. His pupils were dilated to the maximum, reflecting the crimson fire. All his fear of death, his trauma from Raynare, and his existential panic over the supernatural were wiped away in a single stroke. They were crushed and replaced by absolute awe and the religious devotion of the fanboy inside him.
"N-No way..." Issei whispered, his jaw literally hanging down to his chest. His eyes filled with thick, comical tears of pure masculine emotion. "It's... it's the red aura! Floating rocks! The ground is shaking! It's the damn Kaio-ken!"
But Kaiju had not finished his show.
With a bright smile free from the burdens of his past, Kaiju joined both hands at his right side, in the classic cupped shape.
The red energy of his aura began to swirl, and in the center of his palms, a small sphere of sapphire-blue light began to shine and grow rapidly, emitting a deafening electric hum.
"Ka..." Kaiju murmured, and the sphere grew to the size of a soccer ball, illuminating the street with blue and red flashes.
Issei fell to his knees. "T-The stance! The sphere of light!"
"Me..." The wind around Kaiju became a miniature hurricane, lifting his uniform jacket.
"Ha...! Me...!" Kaiju leaned his torso back, gathering all the contained power.
Issei was already sobbing from pure otaku happiness, hands clasped together in a praying position. "He's going to do it! Damn it, he's going to do it in real life!"
Kaiju fixed his gaze on the cloudy night sky, threw his arms forward, and shouted with all his strength.
"HAAAAA!!"
An immense, furious, blinding torrent of sapphire-blue light erupted from his hands. The giant beam of pure energy shot upward, illuminating all of Kuoh City. The Kamehameha pierced the firmament, struck the thick layer of gray clouds, and split them in half with the cleanness of a divine sword, leaving a perfect hole through which the light of the full moon finally illuminated the street.
The roar was colossal, followed by a rain of blue sparks that fell softly over the neighborhood.
Kaiju lowered his arms, dispelling the Kaio-ken aura and exhaling a small cloud of steam. He returned to his lazy posture and turned toward Issei.
Issei was prostrated on the ground, his forehead pressed against the destroyed asphalt in a full bow.
"MASTER!" Issei shouted, crying rivers. "PLEASE, TEACH ME! I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DESTROY PLANETS! I WANT TO BE A Z WARRIOR!"
Kaiju scratched the back of his neck and smiled. Definitely, speaking in shonen language was far more efficient than trying to explain the truth.
"Get up, idiot. I'm not going to teach you to destroy planets. But, if you survive basic training so you don't get stabbed with light again... maybe I'll teach you how to fly. Now let's go, I'm still hungry."