“Fuuuuck! It’s been over a decade, man, and she still kicked our asses.” An incredibly large, muscular but also flabby teenage boy let out a sigh, a cigarette he was too young to be smoking hanging out of his mouth. “She’s way too strong, Haku, we should give up.”
The large man sat atop an old ratty sofa, his shaved head resting on the back pillow and staring at the ceiling of the motel room that currently held three occupants. Across from him, sitting on the edge of one of the room’s two beds was a man the same age with dyed blond hair carefully styled. On the far west side of the room, a third teenage boy, this one very thin and lanky leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “Taro-kun’s right, boss. I don’t think there’s much we can do about that crazy woman even if we trained for 100 more years.”
“I’m not giving up! She might have beaten us when we were children, but we’re men now! She’s just a girl, a teenage girl! Last week must have been… some kind of fluke. Yeah, it was just a fluke!” The leader of the three boys stood up, cracking his knuckles. “Next time for sure… for sure!”
“Man, what’s up with you lately? Why do you care so much about this girl who we bullied in grade school?” Taro, the biggest of the three, looked at his friend, his eyes widening with realization as soon as the words came out of his mouth. “Wait, don’t tell me… you’re in love with her? Is that why you picked on her back then?!”
“S-Shut up! That’s not it, I just don’t like her stupid face is all… and I can’t forgive a girl for thinking she’s stronger than me!”
“She is stronger than you.” Both of Haku’s friends replied simultaneously, to which the teenage punk merely crossed his arms and ignored them entirely. The lanky member of the trio continued to talk, a serious expression on his face. “She’s inhuman, man, we couldn’t even see her move!”
“Ehehehe, your friend is right about that, Hatsu Takeru certainly is inhuman.” an unknown voice cut into their conversation, and the three men froze in place. The voice danced around the room, echoing from every direction. “Humans like you don’t have any chance of winning against an awakened Shard of Ahriman… but it’s cute that you think you can.”
Like a mirage, a female form appeared in the room. She materialized sitting on the second bed in the room with an eerie giggle. The girl was dressed like she walked out of a greek painting. Flowing white robes covered her bronze skin, and a pair of silver half rim oval glasses rested on her face between locks of lightly curled brown hair that reached just past her bare shoulders.
“W-Who the fuck are you, bitch? How did you get in here?!” Haku, always quick to anger, approached the strange woman. Before his hand could reach her, he found himself staring at the ceiling of the motel room. “Huh?”
The woman stood over him, her robe hanging loosely in a way that made it seem like he was just about to see up her dress, but not enough that he could actually see anything. “Human beings are slow, weak. Father didn’t wish for any foolish uprising to happen again, so he made sure you weren’t capable of such things. Hatsu Takeru is not human, so you will never beat her.”
“What kinda anime bullshit are you spouting? Ya high or something?”
“I am a Valkyrie of the Fifth Legion, Second Division. My full name is quite long, so you may simply refer to me as ‘Mihr’ for now.” the young woman continued unperturbed by the young man’s complaints. She crouched down on top of him, a position that would have been quite arousing were it not for the intense malice that poured from every inch of her body. A primal dread filled the room as the three men watched her, unable to resist. “We fight to eradicate the surviving shards of the soul of the dark lord Ahriman. This particular shard is interfering with my own goals, but for various circumstances I’m not permitted to remove her myself… but such restrictions of hierarchy do not apply to you three.”
“Ya just said we can’t win, so what, you want us to go get our asses handed to us again?” Haku growled at the angelic being sitting on top of him.
“While you might be weak humans, you are technically made of the same energies as us citizens of heaven, and with the help of an ancient ritual largely forgotten, I can pass some of my stored up energies to you. Individually, you still wouldn’t be on par with this Takeru, but the three of you together could defeat her… possibly.”
The young looking girl hopped off the delinquent and twirled around. Her flowing white robes fluttered around her, a truly angelic visual experience. The girl pushed up her silver glasses, a dangerous sparkle in her glowing golden eyes.
“Shall we begin?”
-
Her city crumbled around her, her home, burned to the ground. In the dying embers, the distant screams of those who were unfortunate enough to survive the initial attack wove together into a frightening chorus.
She was unable to stand, her body weak from fighting. The only reason she didn’t fall on her face and sink in the dirt and ash at her feet was her spear, which she used as a crutch. This wasn’t the first time she had seen this scene, it happened again and again. Her soul was reborn, forced to witness this horror anew.
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Standing in front of her, a young man dressed as a knight blocked her view of the horizon. His wide back seemed so strong, so unbreakable. And yet, blood covered him from head to toe. He held a greatsword in his left hand, and his right arm was completely gone.
“M-My Liege… we must flee this place, there is yet hope for survival.” she begged him, but he shook his head and raised up his blade, resting it on his shoulders.
“Nay, Raza, I can not do as you ask of me, my love.” his voice quivered, but his conviction was overwhelming, and he would never back down from a task once he made up his mind. “Should we both run, the ruin that has befallen our brothers will take us both… I will cut them down and form a bridge of their corpses for you to escape!”
“I don’t want to live without you, I can’t watch you die… not again!” Raza cried out, forcing her broken body to move forward. She fell against his broad back, her tears mixing with the blood and grime on his stained armor.
“Hmph, you think so lightly of me then? I shall not die here, I will come for you once I’ve defeated these pesky flies!” he reassured her, his heavy boots taking the first step. With every ounce of strength he had left, he ascended into the sky, two batlike wings sprouting from his back.
Raza obeyed him despite her protests, and hid herself away in a remote village. She sealed her powers away, and waited for his return. But like all those times before, he did not return. Months went by, years went by, but still there was no sign of him.
Unable to bear her despair, the Raza of that time took her own life.
Yuuki Raza awoke in her largely empty bedroom. The memory of her past dredged up from her previous life slowly faded from her thoughts, merely a distant dream now. She looked over at the one thing in her room besides her futon, her alarm clock. She was only a few minutes early from her usual waking time, so she crawled out of bed and got dressed for school.
Raza and the other reincarnated Daeva were different from those who were born from Ahriman’s soul. They were complete spiritual beings, being reborn more or less as themselves every time.
Raza’s birth name was different, but once she had started living on her own, she had changed it to match the name she remembered from her first life. The other Daeva she met did not do the same, they had less attachment to their original selves, but she wouldn’t allow this name to be lost to time. It was the first gift from her love to her, it was precious beyond belief.
Raza always sought out the Heirs of Ahriman once her memories awakened within her new body, though the shattered nature of Ahriman’s soul meant that the chances of finding the same one was likely impossible.
Takeru did not seem to remember her at all, but that was fine. They were all their own person, but all still Ahriman. If they didn’t remember her in their next lives, she would simply have to leave a strong enough impression that they remembered the next time.
And so Raza set out to meet her current Ahriman. She was a bit early, perhaps the dream of her past life had made her anxious to group back up with Takeru… a strange feeling tugged at her metaphorical heart, something different to the loving admiration she had for Ahriman.
She arrived at the gates to the city park, their usual meeting spot when they headed to school together, and she leaned against the metal fence enclosing the green patch of land amidst the gray industrial cityscape, waiting for Takeru to appear in a few minutes.
“Hey hey hey, lookie who we got here… it’s Takeru's lil friend! Sup girl~” A voice sliced like a knife through the silence of the early morning, and the reincarnated Daeva looked up from her listless shoegazing. There was a face she vaguely recognized from a few weeks back, a bleached blonde punk who had picked a fight with Takeru and lost instantly. With him were his two goons, who were equally useless in Raza’s assessment. Not that she expected much from an ordinary human, but she somehow felt Takeru would have wiped the floor with them even before awakening her ancient strength.
“You know Takeru’s not a guy, right? I know she’s a bit manly, but if you’re looking for a boyfriend, surely you’d be happier with one of us?” The delinquent continued, his hands casually resting in the pockets of his red track jacket, the team mascot of a nearby school and rival to the academy she attended was emblazoned on the back, a white tiger.
“Move, you’re in my way.” Raza replied coldly, her eyes staring with the intensity of the gorgon medusa, though the punks did not turn to stone. She began to leave, deciding to wait for Takeru outside her apartment, but the three boys blocked her escape.
“Wait a minute there, we’re not done here… why don’t you play with us for a bit? Ya don’t look very strong, but if you’re really a Deava…”
“..!”
Silently, Raza reacted. A chill rushed across her body as the schoolboy delinquent uttered a word he shouldn’t know about. Something was wrong with this situation, how did he know she was a Daeva, he was just a human being, wasn’t he?!
She reacted without thinking, her leg swinging in an arc at the man’s face. A perfect roundhouse kick with more than enough strength to knock out a human opponent, any more and she risked killing him right there, so she held back just a bit. The man held out his hand, catching her kick mid strike to Raza’s horror.
“Girls these days are too violent.” he sighed, pulling Raza towards him with the hand on her leg. His fist crashed into her face before she could blink, and the inertia in her body reversed. She slammed against the metal park fence, a shockwave of pain spiking through her brain.
He was too fast, too strong for a human. It wasn’t possible, how had he gained this strength in only a few weeks? Her thoughts scrambled to find an answer, but they wouldn’t give her enough time. Her body had to move to avoid being overwhelmed by the three of them. She dashed forward, intending to transform into her combat form, but the second of the punks moved with monstrous speed, a swift fist crashing into her ribs.
It wasn’t that they were stronger than her, or even more skilled. It was simply that she had no time to react. As soon as she was given enough time to transform herself, her power would surely have overwhelmed them all. And yet… the three men pummeled her in a one sided beatdown. Defeated in less than a minute, Raza fell to the ground, losing consciousness.
The largest of the delinquents brought out a length of chain and wrapped it around the downed Daeva’s body, and the three of them quickly disappeared with their target. There was no longer any sign they had been there at all, except for a small smearing of blood on the pavement.