Now that he’d made his point clear and Mion didn’t seem to have anything else to say, Kai thought that would be the end of discussion. But that was when Mion opened his mouth again to speak, with the most guilty look on his face for some reason, “I don’t deserve to be your dear friend.”
Kai had barely put his hand on the caravan door when he heard Mion muttering this and he turned back to him, confused. “What?”
“Therefore I don’t deserve your protection.” Mion spoke again, trembling now. And before Kai could even ask what he meant, he blurted out, “…and you don’t deserve to risk your life for someone who wanted to harm you just for personal gain!”
Kai froze where he stood at these words. He couldn’t afford to dawdle here what with danger still raging out there in search of them, so what was Mion on about by saying any of this?
With his voice trembling as much as his body, Mion kept saying, “When we first met on that night of the storm, I didn’t approach you looking for company. The reason I was even out there in the first place was because I’d gotten fed up with my folks pushing me around like always so I wanted to do something, anything, to prove to them I could be like them. That was when you ran into me, so I thought I could use you as an opportunity. I… I wanted to…”
Obviously fighting back sobs, Mion was shaking so much now he found it hard to properly complete his sentence, and it was only when Kai cautiously reached a hand out to him he shouted out with his eyes streaming, “I wanted to possess you and take your soul to prove myself worthy to my kind!”
Kai froze again with bewilderment and disbelief as Mion fully broke down before him. Even between heavy sobs the demon still found himself to continue, “I tried to do you in so many times during all those meetups we had together but I couldn’t… because the more time we spent together the more I had a change of heart, and now… it’s lead to all of this…”
He paused to cry for several more seconds before finding his voice again, “Now you see, you got dragged into a danger you didn’t need to be a part of, all because of my wrongdoings! So don’t put yourself on the line for me, I’m not worth it! I don’t care if you hate me or anything now that you know what I initially wanted to do with you, just get out of here and away from all this! Save yourself and don’t waste your worry on me! I…” then he startled Kai by falling to the caravan floor and slamming his fist onto it in sheer despair, screaming, “WHY DID I HAVE TO BE A DEMON?!!?”
The shock of this sudden outburst left both of them unable to do anything other than keep crying on the floor or just stand by the door for what felt like forever. Kai needed time to make sense of what Mion had just said, and Mion was waiting for his confession to sink in to Kai so he’d finally get away from this danger that rightfully shouldn’t be any of his concern. He meant it when he said he didn’t care if Kai no longer viewed him favorably for his past intentions and thus, no longer felt the need to protect him. Even if this meant he’d never see Kai again afterwards, if it also meant Kai could be safe from all the trouble he’d caused for him, Mion figured he could live with that. That is, if he ever got to live at all after he was done with Miyu and Daichi.
Which is why when Mion felt a hand gently place itself on his shoulder and heard Kai’s voice speak to him, he was so surprised he instantly stopped crying. “I can’t say I’m completely innocent either, since the reason I decided to help you was initially more similar to your motives as well.”
“Huh…?” Mion looked up to see Kai kneeling before him with one hand comfortingly holding his shoulder and his face wearing a look of reassurance, “But that doesn’t matter to me, not anymore. What does matter is what I need to do right now, tonight. There’s demons out there putting humans in danger… putting you in danger… and protecting all of them from the evil is an angel’s duty – a duty that can’t be overshadowed by personal emotions…”
Mion couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not because Kai too had admitted his initial hidden motivations, but because Kai’s willingness to stand up for someone like him had not changed in the slightest. “You… still want to do this for me? After what I’ve tried to do to you?” He croaked.
Kai spoke again without a change in his reassuring tone of voice, “Another duty angels carry out is learning to accept and guide sinners who repent from the bottom of their hearts. Those are whom the Lord believes deserves a chance, therefore it’s what we angels choose to believe as well.”
Stifling a single small sob, Mion dropped his gaze back to the caravan floor and muttered, “Really…?” to which Kai replied, “If second chances didn’t exist then the world would be much harder to face than it already is, the Lord is more merciful than you think… and you’ve already more than proven your penitence, from turning on your own kind to reform yourself, to even saving a life several times – namely just me, but I digress… you do deserve that hard-earned second chance, so grasp at it and live the new life you’ve yearned for, and I’ll do my best to ensure my friend gets there.”
Mion looked back up at Kai after wiping his eyes, and to his surprise, managed to crack a grateful smile as he said, “Thank you Kai… for everything… and for being my friend.”
Kai gave Mion a friendly hug in return, saying, “Save it for when we meet again after this is all over.”
And after that exchange, Kai was off, leaving Mion to stare out through the open caravan door and whisper with his hands held together, “I don’t know if you’ll want to from a being like myself, but god, please hear me when I pray for you to help Kai come back safe and sound…”
* * *
Seeing the belly of the beast itself with his own eyes rather than just through a TV screen sent Kai all sorts of shivers down his spine, even as he remained hidden from the hell beasts roaming the area during his flight. Everywhere he looked, from the ground to the sky, he couldn’t spot a single place free of hellhounds or demonic birds. To say the tension of having to fly as quickly as possible while not drawing any attention could be cut with a knife was an understatement. Kai was more frightened than when he was forced to flee alone during the fight in the breached heaven sub-faction. Even the temporary cover provided by the buildings he hid in felt as unsafe as the outdoors.
More than once this suffocating tension came to the point of making Kai think this was a bad idea and that he should indeed somehow wait the whole thing out until he could be joined by his kind when they inevitably came to take care of this. But whenever such thoughts knocked at his mind’s door, Kai forced his gaze upon the hellish mess the beasts – and their summoners – were making out of the human world, and how more of this would happen if they weren’t stopped now.
“You let fear cloud your judgement again, and you’ll be more sorry than you’ve ever been…” Kai thought to himself while passing through what seemed like the inside of a devastated office building. “The moment the demons notice my folks coming, they’ll escape the scene and continue pursuing Mion, and no doubt they’ll keep doing something like this if it means they’ll get what they want, even if it also means endangering lord knows how many humans in the process…”
He hated to repeat himself, but he hated more the idea of him making another rash decision in the face of fear and thus doing something irresponsible once more. What was worse, it wouldn’t be just him in a pickle if things went that way, but many more innocent humans, not to mention Mion.
That said, these determinations still weren’t enough to help Kai reach his targets. He must’ve been flying hidden around the area for ages and he couldn’t see either Miyu or Daichi. It was like looking for two needles in a haystack, with the demons being the needles and the beasts being the hay.
“At this rate, the only option left is to make them come to me, however risky that may be…” Kai thought. But how was that to be done? Aside from the obvious fact that this was looking to be a two-against-one face off, attracting the demons’ attention also meant attracting those of the beasts as well, which was the last thing any sane person would want in such a position.
Kai sat down in the middle of a building floor littered with broken pieces of furniture and glass to think this over. How could he succeed at a distraction while remaining hidden?
The answer came to him when his eyes mindlessly scanned the floor he was sitting on and, by some chance, landed on a stray jet-black feather, obviously left there by one of the demonic birds.
Struck with an idea, Kai leapt to his feet and spread his wings, from which he plucked a single white feather with a slight wince. Then he snuck up to one of the broken windows and blew the feather out into the street, before quickly hiding himself behind an upturned table near the window.
Kai didn’t even need to keep looking out the window to know what would happen next. There was the unmistakable sound of a hellhound grunting in the distance, followed by a few barks. Kai could then hear many fist-sized paws making their way up to where the sounds first came, along with the flapping of wings which were obviously several demonic birds landing nearby to speculate.
Eventually Kai heard the flapping of some different kind of wings and knew what it meant. Carefully he peeked out the window and saw, with no big surprise, Miyu and Daichi standing down on the street. The latter had Kai’s feather held up to his eyes, and both of them looked rather surprised.
“This is no feather from some random pigeon in the city.” Daichi muttered, examining every inch of the feather. “There’s no doubt about it – the angel could be here.”
Miyu nodded in agreement and added, “It can’t be something that’s been left behind in advance for our beasts to discover just now either. What are the chances of an object as light and frail as a feather managing to stay this clean after the hell we’ve made of this place? And a white one too…”
It was now or never. If Kai let the demons keep rambling over his feather without him taking action, they’d eventually send all the beasts out to look for him, and then it would only be a matter of time before his cover was blown. The angel took a deep breath of determination, got out his crossbow to take aim, and put all his focus on the target before firing.
Daichi dropped dead before he even had time to realize what he and Miyu were in for, the arrow sticking out at an angle from his head. Miyu jumped back in surprise, but regained her composure fast enough to try and see where the arrow had come from based on its assumed trajectory.
Kai leapt back to hide behind the desk after confirming he hit his mark, but Miyu had already seen a flash of white from one of his wings disappear from one of the windows of a nearby building. At once she shouted at the beasts around her, “Up there!” which Kai heard and knew was his cue to start running. But even as he ran across the room, the devilish squawks of the birds and the roars of the hellhounds rang out from everywhere to close in on him.
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By the time Kai was nearing the window on the other side of the room, he sensed one of the many bird noises seemed like it was chasing him from right behind. He turned around with his weapon drawn and sure enough, one bird was charging at him at full speed, its sharp beak pointed directly at the target its beady red eyes were locked on for piercing through.
Fortunately this time, Kai was faster. His rapid firing of arrows at the bird made it go off course in an attempt to dodge them. Kai could just make out the creature tumbling into a concrete pillar in a flurry of black feathers, before he braced himself for jumping out the window into the open, all while Miyu’s voice could be heard from somewhere, “Capture him, don’t kill him! I need him alive!”
The moment he found himself outside, another bird came swooping down on top of him. However, Kai had figured every beast would be hell bent on surrounding him once his cover was blown so he improvised the best defense move he could. Spinning around in midair, he continued his rapid fire of arrows in every direction possible, while his free hand brandished his sword to swing it about.
As soon as that was over, Kai spread his wings to prevent himself from hitting the ground. Sure enough, his improvisation did make most of the beasts trying to close in on him back off in fear of getting slashed or skewered. What wasn’t expected, however, was a battered SUV hurtling through the air towards Kai the moment he’d stopped his spinning.
Kai outstretched his arms, both out of instinct and to hopefully prevent the worst, resulting in him catching the SUV by the top of its roof. It wasn’t enough though, as the impact of the huge vehicle slamming into him at full force still sent him flying backwards several feet and onto the ground. Kai could only stop when after partially futile attempts at halting himself, his backside made much more painful contact with a wall than when he’d been fighting a hellhound earlier that night.
Grimacing and trying to recover from the pain of the crash, Kai remained hidden behind the now even more battered SUV, while sound of the beasts slowly closing in on him could be heard from all directions. Most of all, Kai could make out Miyu’s voice approaching from somewhere in front of him, “Shit, I might’ve messed up… he’d better be alive after all that, being an angel-“
Despite the still strong pain, Kai ignored it and focused all his strength in his legs. Miyu sounded like she had her guard down a bit, perhaps the element of surprise might work in his favor again. With that in mind, he kicked the car towards where Miyu’s voice was coming from with all his might.
The car violently rolled a good several feet from Kai, then abruptly stopped with a loud crash. Miyu had caught the car in her own hands and shielded herself from it.
With the surprise attack plan a failure, Kai aimed to shoot at his opponent with his crossbow, but the first shot missed and hit the bottom of the car instead, which was now facing in Kai’s direction. This was due to one of the watching hellhounds lunging at him upon seeing him attack.
“Stop!” Miyu’s voice shouted from somewhere behind the SUV, prompting the hellhound to instantly halt its assault on Kai. “You’re gonna kill him like that, that’s enough!”
This gave Kai the chance to throw the hellhound off himself. Before he could so much as kill it however, Miyu leapt out from behind the upturned SUV and threw a couple of dark-red knives at him. And what with his attention having been momentarily drawn to the hellhound, Kai had no time to do anything about either of them before one stabbed his left palm and pinned it to the wall behind him, while the other did the same with his right forearm where his crossbow was.
Screaming in agony, Kai tried to get his crossbow to point at Miyu, who was now standing on top of the car to scowl at him. But the knife holding his arm in place to the wall wouldn’t budge, so the closest he could aim at Miyu was in the direction of a utility pole nearby, which wasn’t remotely close to where she currently was as she taunted, “Looking like Jesus on the cross, ha!”
Kai said nothing to that, having no intention of showing any signs of weakness towards whatever Miyu might say or do to him.
Miyu sat down on the car and began casually tossing a third knife up and down in her hand like it was a toy, saying, “You’ve got some balls to come here alone and kill my associate… if this was all about protecting your so-called demon friend, then I’m sorry – you’ve achieved nothing. Once I’m done with you I’ll find him on my own somehow, and then all your folks who destroyed my home.”
“My sub-faction?” Said Kai through more grimaces of pain. “You and what army?”
“With some hope, there might be other sub-factions of hell out there willing to hear me out once I get your sub-faction’s coordinates out of you…” Miyu wondered aloud, shrugging. “It’s not like I can’t afford to try… in fact, why stop myself from trying anything? I got nothing more to lose.”
Kai fell silent again. He didn’t know to say or do about that other than take whatever measures possible to stop Miyu from getting his faction’s coordinates out of him and getting away with it.
Speaking of which, Miyu spoke in a more sinister tone this time, “But enough playing around – I can brandish countless more knives like this, and every time you don’t tell me where Mion is or your sub-faction’s coordinates, you’ll find them cutting your flesh open just enough to not kill you.”
Despite not showing it on the surface, panic began brewing up within Kai. How long could he keep his lips sealed before his kind came to the scene? There was no way out of this unless some form of help was within reach. Until then, he just had to give his all to bear whatever was to come.
Whether she knew what he was thinking or by pure coincidence, Miyu said, “And don’t think anyone can save you now. By the time any angels sense this disturbance and come to deal with it, I’ll be gone… and when that happens, you’re coming with me!”
Now Kai knew he was running on borrowed time to take Miyu down. But no matter how much time he had, with his weapons impossible for proper use, the evil immensely outnumbering him and having all eyes on him, he seemed to be just as powerless as the humans he’d seen on TV running away from the beasts earlier. In other words, he was out of any bright ideas he could use right now.
Out of bright ideas… bright ideas…
Those couple of words were enough to get Kai’s mind formulate a possible way out, after being reminded of the time he and Mion were trying to escape their pursuers in the subway tunnels.
“Can I use any of my surroundings to my advantage like that time while I’m stuck to this wall and helplessly surrounded, though?” He thought.
Just then he felt a sharp pain graze his left thigh and he screamed again. Miyu had thrown another knife at him to cut the skin on his leg before saying, “You thought I was bluffing, angel? Lots more like that to come if you continue to keep your mouth shut.”
Through heavy breathing from the intensified pain, Kai concentrated all he could on his surroundings in search of what he could utilize, at the same time considering if any of them could be within his reach even from his position. It was then he noticed the missed arrow he’d shot into the underside of the car Miyu was sitting on was trickling gasoline. Even as a fourth knife grazed his right shoulder, Kai observed where the gasoline spill was flowing, and saw it was somewhere under the utility pole.
That was it. Kai braced himself for more pain, and distracted Miyu with, “Wanna know where my sub-faction is?” to which Miyu leaned in a bit to hear, only for Kai to say it was located up a part of her body that the other angels would’ve chastised Kai for mentioning in such a vulgar fashion.
This earned a good few more knives from an enraged Miyu grazing Kai’s skin, but it was worth it. The taunt had drawn Miyu’s attention towards Kai just enough for her to not notice Kai’s right arm struggling to aim properly at the power lines on the utility pole.
“Keep that up, and I might let the beasts join in on the interrogation.” Miyu growled. “I suppose you already have an idea of how much a hound or a bird-“ She was then interrupted by something flying upwards through the air out of the corner of her eye, which she recognized as an arrow. On top of that, she also noticed the source of the arrow had been her enemy’s crossbow.
“HEY!” Miyu shouted, and threw a knife straight into Kai’s side. Then seeing the arrow had only cut through the utility pole’s power lines, she turned back to Kai to say sarcastically, “Close but no cigar!”
“Or is it?” Kai retorted. The cut power lines rained sparks down on the gasoline as they fell, igniting the fluid. And just as Kai had hoped, the fire immediately spread towards and into the car without giving Miyu any time to make sense of what Kai said.
“What the-“ Those were the last words Miyu found herself saying just as the whole car erupted into flames with a loud boom. All the hellhounds and birds around it scattered with various high-pitched yelps and shrieks, and Kai’s vision was momentarily blinded in the explosion’s bright light, before it was followed with a familiar blackness.
* * *
By the time Makoto and Hikasa had gotten the help they called for in the wake of the immense summoning of hell beasts in the city – which they got rid of without leaving a single one alive – it was dawn. The area where they’d been summoned and wreaking havoc was almost as big of a mess as the heaven sub-faction they’ve tried to defend days ago, but so far they couldn’t see any human casualties. The angels hoped this was because most humans had managed to flee the outbreak successfully, even as they glanced at ambulances passing here and there to tend to the hurt.
But just when they thought the event itself was most unexpected, more awaited them as they inspected the site. While the summoning and presence of so many hell beasts had messed them up pretty badly, faint traces of Kai could still be picked up. When they followed those traces though, all they were met with was a great bloodstain on a wall, a few dark-red knives, and some charred white feathers several feet from a badly burnt SUV, accompanied with an equally burnt corpse.
Before the human police arrived at the scene to investigate, the angels did their own investigation on the corpse and deduced there was no relation between it and the feathers. In fact, to everyone’s surprise, the corpse turned out to be that of a demon, possibly one responsible for this disaster.
“That said, where could Kai possibly be after all this?” Hikasa wondered worriedly, to which Ayano replied in the same tone of voice, “We all wish he’s alright, but judging by the evidence we saw back there, I’m frankly finding it hard to get my hopes up…”
Having overheard this from nearby, Makoto sighed deeply. It genuinely pained him to think that after everything Kai had been through, the worst case scenario could’ve potentially happened to him. And to add insult to injury, they now had no idea how or where to find Kai in all this.
Makoto turned his gaze away from the devastated streets as if doing so would get his mind off the bad expectations the scene was feeding him with. As he did, his gaze then fell upon an alleyway where to his bewilderment, he saw something – or rather someone – familiar. A familiar face he’d seen conversing with Kai days ago on a bridge over a river of roaring currents before it collapsed. A face he and many others had witnessed utter coordinates that lead them straight to the hell sub-faction responsible for the fall of one of their own.
Makoto didn’t hesitate to draw the other angels’ attention to this, just as the individual noticed he was being watched and turned to get away.
“Inori sama?” Makoto asked their leader who was standing next to him, and when she nodded at his question, they all began their pursuit of Mion.
* * *
Mion had awoken around dawn at the sounds of bustling and sirens outside the caravan he fell asleep in. Wandering out cautiously, he saw the streets filled with human emergency services rushing to places where they were needed. Instantly remembering what this was all about, Mion followed them to the much more devastated part of the city, his mind wondering the fate of his dear friend.
On his way Mion saw the hell beasts were nowhere in sight, meaning they were most likely all terminated, which should be good news. One group of crime scene investigators were seen looking over a corpse with an arrow sticking out his head, which Mion recognized as Daichi and felt his heart skip a beat. Could this mean Kai had been successful at what he’d set out to do last night?
These expectations were put to a halt though, when Mion stumbled upon a second group of crime scene investigators standing around a burnt SUV with a charred corpse on it, accompanied with a wall several feet away covered in blood and with dark-red knives sticking out of it. The most alarming sight was the several mildly burnt white feathers on the ground near the wall. Even from a distance, Mion had no doubts on where those feathers had come from, and his hope turned to worry.
He’d been watching all this from an alleyway where the scene was fairly visible, when something he heard a few people nearby say made his heart skip a beat again – something about “hell beasts”, “demon”, “sub-faction”, and last but not least, the name “Kai”.
What was going on? Mion knew well enough that no human could ever know what the meanings behind those words could possibly be. This could only mean one of two things – angels or demons.
But come to think of it, no demon back at what used to be his sub-faction knew about Kai except those who’d been trying to hunt him down, all three of whom were now dead based on what Mion could hear these people say. So the only conclusion could be…
Mion’s thoughts were cut short when he noticed one of the people who’d been having the strange conversation turned around and spotted him eavesdropping in the alleyway. Even before the person turned to the others to draw attention to him, Mion felt in his instincts he probably shouldn’t be engaging with this lot, considering what he was. He turned to get away from there just as he heard in the distance the voice of the one who spotted him ask someone, “Inori sama?” and several footsteps begin to pursue him.