Raza and I left school together, the first day back after the repairs were finished. I could feel some of the girls glaring at us as we headed through the gate… Why do girls get so jealous of me and other people, they know I’m also a girl, right? Wait, maybe they… maybe they don’t?

It was kind of hard for me to look her in the eye right now, after what happened… should I say something about it? I thought about what to do as we silently headed down the street, but then my body froze. A shiver ran down my spine, like a wave of terror has washed over me.

“..!” I gasped, but words didn’t form, my brain was locked in that sensation of fear.

“What a powerful aura wave… an heir has just been reborn, and close.” Raza said, placing her hand on my shoulder, an action that finally woke me up from the freeze.

“Why did it chill me to the bone like that… that was… the primal fear of death?” I took a deep breath, my hand on my chest. It hurt to inhale, feeling like I was forcing myself to do so. “The fear he felt… the moment his soul was shattered?”

“Daeva such as me don’t get the same feeling when we sense an awakening, so I can’t answer you.” she replied, looking off to the shopping district. “But yes, that’s what I was told before.”

That’s right, Raza… she has multiple past lives, she remembers more than one of her lives, while I only vaguely remember Ahriman’s. It must be hard to remember being someone else, my memories feel false and distant still.

“We should go find them… right?” I asked, and she nodded in response. I began to speed up my pace as we walked towards the outer wall of the school, but I one again stopped in my tracks at the gate.

“Takeru, is something wrong?” she asked, looking at me with concern. “Is the aura wave still affecting you?”

“Nah, that’s not it…” I replied, handing Raza my school bag. She looked at it puzzled, as I rolled up my left sleeve and walked towards the gate.

A strong gust of wind blew past, carrying cherry blossoms across my vision. Within the flurry of petals, it didn’t look like a real scene. The person standing there, his back leaned against the school gate was nothing more than a mirage. A face I was never going to see again, casually standing there with his hands in his pockets. Wearing the same leather jacket he always did, his hair swept up with some kind of gel, he looked exactly as I remembered him.

“Yo, Takeru-chan.” he opened his eyes and looked up at me, somehow recognizing me easily after so long. For me, he only looked a little older, but I had surely grown a lot since we last met, right? He waved at me with a stupid smile on his face, like nothing had changed between us.

My fist crashed into his face, and the man slammed against the dirt. A few students gasped at the sudden violence, but most of them were used to me beating people down and just ignored it.

“Whew, talk about a rude welcome…” he complained as he stood up, rubbing his cheek with his left hand. “You still don’t hold back, do ya?”

“Takeru, this is..?” Raza walked over to us, trying to decipher the situation.

“Where the fuck have you been, Aniki?!” I shouted, my voice far more upset than I expected it to be. My punch shot towards him again, but he sidestepped it this time, laughing. “You disappeared eight years ago, you didn’t even say goodbye!”

I was shaking, my body was shaking… nothing ever makes my body shake, wait, am I crying? I am, I am crying what the fuck? This isn’t the look of the unbeatable boss of Kamijou high, who the hell is this angry, scared girl?

“Okay, ya got me, that was a shitty move… but I didn’t expect you to still be mad at me after so long.” he replied, dancing past another of my punches. I was holding back more than he realized, my fists would splatter him into a paste now. “Look, Takeru-chan, I wanted to say goodbye before I left, honest. It’s just… things were complicated, it’ll take a while to explain.”

“Save it, I’m not interested.” I turned away from him, putting my hands into my pockets. Looking back over my shoulder, I called out to the girl behind me. “Come on Raza, don’t we have some business to take care of?”

The two of us walked away, and he didn’t follow. I don’t know what the hell he’s thinking, showing up so suddenly. Did he really think he would be forgiven so easily?

“I didn’t know you had a brother, Takeru.” Raza, walking next to me, glanced behind us as the school gate disappeared in the distance over a hill.

“I don’t, he was just an older student who lived nearby.” I replied, letting out a sigh. “Used to work for my mom part time, and he… taught me how to fight when I was being bullied.”

“You? Who would bully you?” she looked confused, a slight chuckle escaping her lips.

“As shocking as this might sound, I was a total wimp in elementary school.” I laughed, the tension in my body subsiding. For a second, I was able to forget about how angry I was at Akira, and my focus returned to the more urgent matter. “Do you sense any… angels around here? If we noticed the awakening, they must have noticed too, right?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“I haven’t noticed any new sources of divine light, and the straggler from before hasn’t made any moves. But it doesn’t mean they haven’t noticed, we should hurry before His forces arrive.”

Headed toward the shopping district, we walked side by side. I wonder if other people, outsiders to our struggle… What did they see when they looked at us? Two school friends hanging out after class, or did they see us as..?

“This Akira… he called you Takeru-Chan.” Raza asked, her voice sounding slightly annoyed at her own words. “You didn’t correct him.”

“He’s always called me that, it’s too awkward to tell him to stop now… besides, he’s like my older brother.” I said, not sure why she was annoyed with me.

“A brother, right.” she replied, looking down at her feet. “The way your voice was shaking back there made you sound like a scorned lover.”

“W-Wha?! It’s not like that, Aniki is Aniki, I don’t feel that way about him!” I quickly responded, though my lack of ability to remain calm unnerved her even more. “I might have admired him a bit when I was in elementary school, but that was eight years ago!”

After that awkward conversation, we finally made it downtown. Though at this point, I had lost track of the exact direction of the awakening. I wondered for a moment if we were to walk around aimlessly, when we ran into the worst person to see right now.

A platinum blonde beauty wearing an outfit that did not match her face, being far too modern and casual. She was, like the last time I saw her, doing some shopping. I stopped and stared at her, but I could feel the tension building between us, and there was a bundle of raging energy standing at my side.

“W-Wait, Raza… I’ve dealt with things between us, she’s not an enemy.” I held out my hand to stop the girl beside me from approaching the angel, but the situation was not defused.

“Daeva.” the angel spoke first, her voice cold and sharp like the blade she wielded. “I see Takeru hasn’t seen fit to cast you aside, weakling.”

“I am a loyal servant of Ahriman, I would die for th- did you just say Takeru?” Raza’s eyes widened, and she looked back at me for an explanation. “Why is she on a first name basis with you? Why is she on a first name basis with you?!”

“Like I was saying, Sara-chan is no longer our enemy, I settled things already, we’re friends now.” I replied, clenching my left fist and pumping it for emphasis.

“Sara-chan?!” Both girls shouted in unison. Upon realizing they had copied each other, they both crossed their arms and turned away from the other with a “hurmph!”, not seeming to realize they were continuing to mirror their actions.

“Takeru! Slow down so I can apologize already!” from behind us, Aniki’s voice cut in. He jogged up to us, stopping to catch his breath a few feet away. “I’m really, really sorry about what happened, but it wasn’t something… I could… tell you…” his voice quivered, a flare of anger swirling in his eyes as he saw the angel standing off a short distance from me.

A sharp wind cut through the scene, a palpable tension rising. The angel and Aniki refused to stop staring at each other, their muscles coiled like springs ready to burst. He took a single, determined step forward, raising his arm to block me from Sara’s line of sight.

“Leave Takeru-chan out of this, she has nothing to do with our fight, Valkyrie.” Her voice was harsh, not a shred of the kindness he showed me was left. My brain went blank, almost as if I didn’t want to accept what was going on.

“Aniki… you… you know her?” I asked, hesitating ever so slightly. I didn’t want to know, but I had to know. Things began to click in my mind, connections forming one after the other.

“No, I don’t know this one, not personally at least. But I’ve been fighting her kind ever since I disappeared…” he raised his fists, taking up a boxing styled stance. “I was wondering how I could explain what went down to you, why I ran away, but I guess showing you will be more effective… just remember kid, I’m still me, nothing’s changed in my soul!”

A burst of energy exploded out from within him, an intense aura that reverberated in my twisted soul of shadow. His muscles bulged, the shirt he was wearing barely able to contain them any longer, and the white sclera of his eyes turned black, while his pupils changed from dark brown to a bright, furious crimson. He took a long breath in and closed his eyes, almost medatiavely, and then exhaled sharply.

“For a low level warrior of light, this should be more than enough.” he stated, not because he was overconfident or cocky, he was taking this deathly seriously. Every word was exactly what he believed in that moment, that was how he was when he fought. Combat wasn’t a game to him, it was life.

“Hmmph!” Sara raised her right arm forward, her European styled longsword materializing in her hand. “If you want to die, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

It was like a bolt of lightning. And Just like lightning, the human eye couldn’t follow their movements. Only my unnatural senses could keep up. Sara’s sword clashed with Aniki’s fists, a layer of metal forming around his flesh, a similar armor to what I summoned before.

She thrust her blade forward, and he ducked his head below it, falling into a half crouch. And then his powerful legs launched him forward, his right fist pulled back. Like a crashing wave on a rough sea, his uppercut smashed into her chin, and she was thrown into the air like a discarded doll. Her body fell to the street, limp and crumpled. She rolled to a stop, then struggled to stand up, she wasn’t willing to back down from this fight she clearly could not win.

I jumped between them, holding my hands out towards them both. They paused, unsure what to make of my intervention. Aniki looked at me, confused that I was even able to react to his movements.

“Takeru-Chan… are you?” He started to speak, but I didn’t give him a chance to finish his sentence. Clenching my left hand into a ball, I mustered up the strength needed, and the blackened, burnt iron armor I possessed formed around my arm.

“Knock it off, you two!” I shouted, a shudder going through the air. The angel and the devil were frozen, and Raza off to the side remained a third party. “Sara isn’t a threat, Aniki, she’s on my side.”

“What the fuck are you saying, Takeru-chan? The warriors of light are the enemy of anyone who possesses a fragment of Ahriman’s soul, if you’re one of us how can you not know that?!”

“I do know that! But Sara has been rejected by the heavens, she’s an outcast, cut off from the rest of her people… there’s no need to fight her any longer.”

Things were not exactly going smoothly here.