The neon lights of Tokyo flickered in a distorted symphony, casting an eerie glow over the streets as Hikari and Lila began their search for the fugitive, Gyo. Hikari soared high above the city, her telekinetic power propelling her through the sky, slicing through the clouds in search of any sign, any hint of the rogue convict below. She was a blur, a presence more felt than seen, her senses sharpening as she scanned the cityscape for the faintest trace of his chaotic energy.
On the ground, Lila moved differently—calm, deliberate. She stood in the middle of the bustling street, her form a still point amidst the sea of moving people. Her hands were clasped together in a gesture of concentration, her eyes closed as she attuned herself to the currents of thought swirling around her.
Lila's telepathy wasn't a vast and limitless ocean; it was more like a delicate web, allowing her to skim the surface of minds and pluck the stray thoughts that floated there. It was a skill honed through years of discipline and restraint, but in moments like this, it became her greatest asset. She could feel the hum of the city's collective consciousness, the random fragments of fleeting desires, mundane worries, and bursts of emotion. But none of it was what she needed. She wasn't searching for trivialities; she was hunting for something darker, more specific.
Her mind slipped beneath the surface of the crowd, reaching for something that resonated with her own urgency. She sifted through the noise—Where is he? Where is Gyo? Her thoughts drifted like ripples on water, her senses extending outward, brushing against the minds of those around her. She felt the anxious flicker of a businessman's mind as he worried about a meeting, the distracted hum of a woman thinking about what to make for dinner, the empty longing of a teenager dreaming of escape.
But then—a shift. A thought fractured the smooth flow, sharp and violent. A memory, vivid and laced with fear, shot through the ether like an electric current. Lila's eyes snapped open. He's close.
Without a word, she turned toward the source, the thin thread of Gyo's presence weaving through the minds of the crowd. His thoughts were chaotic, but unmistakable. He was nearby, hiding in plain sight, like a shadow waiting to consume the light.
Hikari's boots hit the ground with a soft thud, the weight of her landing barely making a sound against the rumbling undercurrent of the city. She pivoted toward Lila, her breath a thin mist in the night air, her sharp gaze cutting through the haze of Tokyo's neon-lit chaos. "Find anything?"
Lila didn't immediately respond, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond Hikari, as though the answer was hidden in the shimmer of the city itself. Finally, she gave a slight nod, her expression unreadable. "Maybe. I think I touched his mind while I was searching. Just for a second."
Hikari leaned in, her eyes narrowing, fingers twitching as if ready to spring into action. "Just our luck. So, where is he?"
Lila's voice was soft, tinged with frustration, but carried the weight of the unknown. "That's the problem. I don't know. I only caught a fragment, a single moment, and… I can't always pinpoint people from just that. It's like hearing whispers in a hurricane."
Hikari's jaw tightened, but before she could form a response, the air around them seemed to thrum, the atmosphere thickening with a palpable sense of danger. Her pulse skipped—just a fraction of a second—before her instincts screamed.
Without a moment's hesitation, she threw herself back. The world blurred as she snapped into motion, her telekinetic field surging to push her out of harm's way. But it was too late.
A blade—a jagged, dark orange streak of death—whipped past her with inhuman speed, slicing through the air like the lash of a storm. The force of its passing sent a jolt of adrenaline surging through her veins. She barely managed to twist in time, but the tip of the blade still grazed her arm, carving a deep, searing line across her skin. The pain was sharp, but fleeting. It wasn't fatal, but the scar it left behind would haunt her.
"What the hell…?" Hikari hissed under her breath, her chest heaving as she spun, eyes scanning the area for any sign of the attacker. And then she saw it.
Her stomach twisted into a sickening knot.
A figure stood in the shadows, poised in a crouch, its presence far larger than its form. The creature was humanoid, but that was where the resemblance to a human ended. It was about average height—5'9"—but its frame was lean, wiry, its movements fluid, almost predatory, as though it existed in the space between life and something darker. The combat suit it wore was nothing short of a nightmare made manifest—sleek, matte-black armor that shifted in the dim light like liquid shadow. Reactive plating rippled along its limbs, adjusting with disturbing precision, responding to an unseen threat. Exposed sections of its suit revealed the raw circuitry beneath, faintly glowing with an otherworldly pulse, the veins of technology running through its body like the remnants of a broken dream.
The suit was equipped with silent movement tech—every step it took was drowned in near total silence, as though the very air had been made to obey its will. And there was something else, something Hikari couldn't quite place—its form blurred in and out of focus, faint hints of cloaking flickering at the edges of her vision.
But it wasn't the suit that made her stomach churn. It was its face.
The face was human—once human. Now it was a grotesque parody of humanity, a face so pale it seemed to glow in the darkness, flawless yet wrong. Cybernetic lines traced the jaw and neck, a faint latticework of metal beneath the skin, pulsing with a cold, unfeeling rhythm. Its eyes—those eyes—glowed an unnatural blue, the color of dying stars, flickering like fireflies in the deep dark. They burned with a strange intensity, their glow flickering erratically with each surge of tension, each beat of its hunger.
It wasn't just a thing of metal and wires. It was something far worse—a thing forged from the remnants of humanity, only to be twisted into something unrecognizable, something deadly.
Hikari's breath caught in her throat, her pulse thundering in her ears as she faced the creature. She could almost hear its thoughts, a low hum of violence that reverberated through the air. Whatever it was, it wasn't here to talk.
It was here to kill.
[CUT TO]:
Shinjuku pulsed with synthetic neon and restless electricity, the city breathing in electronic gasps beneath the twilight haze. Nami, Katsuki, and Lyra moved through the urban sprawl with sharp eyes and sharper purpose, weaving between murmuring crowds and digital ghosts, hunting for esper 026 and Marcus E. Kessler.
Then—reality cracked.
BWOOOOOOM.
A colossal surge of raw nuclear energy ripped across the skyline like a divine tantrum. Skyscrapers disintegrated in an instant, collapsing into radiant dust. The blast roared through the city in a blinding inferno of light and radiation, swallowing entire blocks in milliseconds. The ground trembled. Metal screeched. Glass screamed.
And then—silence.
Katsuki didn't hesitate. He transformed.
CRACKLE. FWOOSH. THHHUMM.
His hair blackened into a ravenous storm of writhing violet flames, every strand dancing like it was alive and angry. His eyes ignited into glowing voids, pupils gone—just blinding, geometric shapes that pierced dimensions. His glasses shattered mid-shift, reforming into jagged, translucent shades that throbbed with unnatural geometry.
SHRRRACK.
A phantom jaw-mask snapped into place around his face, materializing with a sound like bones being carved from metal—teeth long, serrated, twitching like hungry blades. His skin rippled as Yokai energy surged through him, black lightning fracturing the air at his feet. The asphalt screamed as it cracked beneath his aura.
Without a word, he grabbed Nami and Lyra under each arm and blurred.
FWOOOOM—
Katsuki exploded down the street in a streak of violet and shadow, a screaming specter of yokai speed. Behind them, the wave of destruction chased like a tidal god, consuming city blocks without resistance. Buildings twisted. Streetlights crumpled. Entire intersections disappeared into golden light.
Nami barely caught her breath.
Nami: "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!"
Lyra: "It sounded like a nuke hit—but… no boom. No shockwave. Nothing."
Katsuki: "That's 'cause I'm running faster than the shockwave can reach us." His voice was deeper now, distorted by the mask. "But yeah—you're not wrong. That is nuclear energy."
Lyra: "If it's just nuclear energy… I can stop it."
Without waiting, Lyra twisted in his grip and dropped.
SKRRRRRRRRRT.
Her boots screamed across the scorched pavement, magnetically anchored, leaving trails of glowing arcs behind her. She spun with kinetic precision, arms outstretched. The blast bore down on her, glowing like a second sunrise.
WHUMMMM—KZZZZZZZT!
She slammed her hands together, and a high-frequency electromagnetic dome erupted around her with a sound like stars tearing. Blue and gold shimmer burst outward in rippling waves, refracting the world into a prismatic haze. Time itself seemed to warp. Light bent. The ground vibrated with screaming metal.
The nuclear wave collided with her barrier—
VVVRRRRRMMM-THUUUUNNKKK!!!
The clash sent shrapnel flying upward. Glass twisted in mid-air, pulled into orbit by the opposing magnetic fields. Cars floated, metal warped, the sky flickered like static caught in a dream.
Lyra's teeth clenched. Blood ran down her lip. Her aura flared, her body wreathed in spiraling electromagnetic tendrils. Then, with practiced calm, she reached into her pocket—
CHINK.
A single coin.
She whispered to it like it was holy.
And then—FWOOM!—plasma roared around it, igniting it into a molten bullet. With a snap of her fingers, she launched it into the heart of the radiation, where it embedded with a CRACK of thunder.
ZAAAAAAK-KOOOOOOM!!!
The sky lit up in a vertical explosion, a Tesla coil of pure plasma ripping upward in jagged arcs, grounding the wave. Purple lightning spiderwebbed across the skyline.
Lyra: "You like nuclear power? Cool. Try getting railgunned with it."
She raised her arms one last time, fingers trembling—but precise. Magnetic field lines surged outward, glowing like ley lines of a dead god. And then—
WUMMMMMMMM—
She reversed the flow.
The radiation folded in on itself, spiraling into a neutron vortex. Buildings shook. Air collapsed. The pressure dropped like a hammer. A nuclear sinkhole opened in the sky and swallowed the energy whole, leaving behind only swirling ionized particles and the sound of emptiness.
CRACK—BOOM—!!
The sky split open with the sound of rupturing metal as a barrage of chains, incandescent and otherworldly, shot through the atmosphere like divine spears. They blazed with radiant light so blinding it seared color out of the world, and the heat—gods, the heat—rippled outward in a pulse that made the very air scream. Each chain trailed behind it a serpent of roaring fire, tearing across the sky like the wrath of an ancient god made manifest.
FWOOOOM—!!
Lyra twisted her body mid-air, lightning arcing along her limbs as she narrowly avoided the first chain's path. It slammed into the ground behind her with an impact that sounded like a dying star collapsing in on itself—KRRAAAKKKTTT!
Where the chain touched down, it didn't just dig into the earth—it violated it. The atomic structure of the terrain shattered, stone liquefying, reality glitching. The very molecules writhed as if they'd been stripped of their cohesion. The ground didn't just burn—it ceased to function, disassembled at a molecular level, as if the laws of nature were being force-fed divine retribution.
Lyra didn't flinch. Her eyes narrowed.
Lyra: "…Interesting."
She didn't wait.
Her form flickered—then vanished in a sudden snap of sound and ozone, transforming into a living bolt of lightning, crackling with blue-white voltage as she rocketed toward the source of the devastation. Thunder trailed behind her like a ghost's wail.
And then she saw him.
A silhouette amidst the shimmering distortion. A man, if one could still call him that.
He stood amid the chaos like a monolith sculpted from violence itself—his massive body carved with deep scars, each one a monument to a war survived, a sin unforgotten. Muscle stacked on muscle, his skin radiating a low, golden glow, as if his flesh itself was in constant fusion. His hair—a wild inferno of black and blood-red strands—whipped around his head in an unfelt wind, crackling with ambient energy.
But it was his eyes that froze the world around them.
Twin furnaces of nuclear red, staring with an intensity that didn't just judge—it condemned. Every blink was a storm held at bay. Every breath, a threat to existence.
???: "…Weaklings."
His voice crashed through the air like a distant war drum, slow and deliberate, yet so thunderous it seemed to echo inside the bones of everyone present. Each word quivered with restraint, like a dam on the verge of rupture. Rage didn't just live in him—it was him.
???: "You call yourselves exorcists… and yet you reek of cowardice."
KRRSHHH!
A flicker of light. Two more appeared beside Lyra—Katsuki, calm and unreadable, and Nami, eyes wide with growing dread.
Nami: "What the hell is going on…?"
Lyra (without looking): "He's the source of the explosion."
Katsuki: "Yeah… I can feel it. That's not just aura. That's… nuclear. Raw and refined."
A low, menacing chuckle vibrated the air.
???: "Damn right I am."
He took a single step forward and the concrete beneath him vaporized—not shattered, not broken—vaporized, reduced to hissing steam and radioactive dust. He raised his right hand, fingers pulsing with pure incandescent fury.
???: "And I'm sick of this place still crawling with the stench of weakness."
Katsuki (smirking): "Weakness, huh?" He leaned forward, voice playful yet deadly. "You're a funny one. Got a name, Titan-boy?"
The man grinned—a wide, cruel, knowing smile.
And then—
FWAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHH—!!
A column of pure nuclear energy blasted from his palm, streaking across the city with sickening beauty, like a comet wreathed in screaming suns. It tore through an entire city block, buildings folding inward like paper before being disintegrated. The scream of steel, the cries of vaporizing air, and the whistle of the end—all of it crescendoed into a single sound:
DEATH MADE AUDIBLE.
When the light cleared, nothing remained. Only ash, wind, and silence.
He turned back to them, the wind carrying his words like a prophecy.
Arcturus: "I am the Sin Archbishop of the Sect of Her Shadows…"
He opened his arms.
"…representing Wrath."
The clouds above them split apart, not from divine light—but from radiation, sheer energy warping the atmosphere. Behind him, shadows curled unnaturally. And if one listened closely, they would hear it—not with ears, but with the soul:
A woman's whisper, repeating one phrase over and over, like a forbidden hymn in a tongue long dead:
"She watches from beyond. She listens through everything."
Arcturus (grinning, voice soaked in venomous pride): "I am Arcturus—the Tempest of Vengeance. Your reckoning has begun."
BOOOOOOOMMMM—!!
[CUT TO]:
KRBOOOOM—!!
The sky trembled, still echoing with the aftershock of the twin nuclear-scale detonations in the distance. Dust drifted like ash, painting the city in hues of rust and dread.
Lila and Hikari stood motionless—just a breath before the storm. The ruins of Tokyo Tower loomed far behind them like a broken crown, and ahead… silence.
Too much silence.
Lila (glancing skyward, voice tight):
"Did you hear those two massive explosions?"
Hikari (eyes scanning the smog-choked skyline):
"Yeah… I did."
Her voice was quieter than usual. Almost reverent.
"It felt like a god bled out over Shinjuku… You think Katsuki and the others made it out?"
Lila (a crooked smirk, masking unease):
"Please. Outrunning a nuke is like morning cardio for Katsuki."
Then her smirk faded.
"But now…"
VRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMM—!!
A sonic shriek split the stillness.
The creature burst from the shadows like a cannonball from hell—its matte-black armor glinting in fragments under the flickering streetlights. The predator lunged, blade sweeping forward in a killing arc, a streak of dark-orange death poised to cleave both girls in half.
But it never reached them.
THOOOOOOM—!!!
A shockwave detonated mid-air, slamming into the creature with the force of a bomb. The monster was violently flung backward, its body ragdolling through concrete and steel before crashing into a nearby skyscraper.
CRRRAAASSSHHHH—!!!
The entire tower shuddered, then buckled, floors collapsing like dominoes. Screaming metal and shattering glass roared as the building folded inward and toppled into the street, devouring the horizon in dust and ruin.
Then—another voice.
Low. Unfiltered. Godlike in its disdain.
???:
"Stand ready for my arrival… worm."
WHUMMMMM—!!
The air thickened. Gravity itself seemed to kneel.
Hikari and Lila slowly turned their heads skyward—and froze.
Floating above the carnage, silhouetted against the dim light of a fractured moon, was a colossus—a man-shaped apocalypse.
He hovered effortlessly, arms loose at his sides, the world bending ever so slightly around him. His body was carved from violence—muscle forged like iron cables, stretched tight beneath scarred, sun-darkened skin. Every inch of him pulsed with restrained devastation.
The air buzzed. Not with sound, but with tension—a migraine-like pressure clawing at the inside of their skulls, as if reality itself couldn't sustain his presence.
His eyes—cold, metallic gray, not reflective but absorptive—voids disguised as vision. Look into them, and you didn't see intent. You saw your own end, already written.
His hair thrashed in the turbulence—midnight-black laced with raw streaks of silver, like the aftermath of lightning etched into flesh. Unruly. Unrepentant. Timeless.
And then his body—a map of war.
Ancient wounds layered across him like tectonic scars. One jagged mark split his face down the center—deep, purposeful, earned. Around his neck, a tattoo of shattered chains wrapped like a collar of rebellion—each link representing a system, a regime, a prison he'd shattered.
His hands—Gods. Those hands.
Thick. Calloused. Cracked from tearing down cities.
They didn't shake from adrenaline. They trembled with anticipation.
Hikari's mouth parted.
No words came out at first. Just breath.
And then—quiet. Broken. Real.
Hikari:
"Shit…"
The name crawled back into her brain from some long-forgotten classified report. A whisper in the minds of the exorcist network. A ghost story told in censored redacted files and bloodstains.
It was Gyo.
The Unbound Butcher.
The walking extinction event.
The man who shouldn't be here.
To be continued…