Oga and I sat on a bench near the park. It was the weekend, and Oga's mom had decided to force him to take Beel out to get some fresh air and do his 'Park debut'.
"So did Hilda tell you why the Zebul spell is so large now?" I asked, looking at the mark on his hand. It had expanded enough to resemble a red tattoo that started on the back of his hand, wrapped around his arm, and stopped just before his elbow.
Oga glanced at it like it was a mildly annoying stain. "Yeah. She said it gets bigger the stronger the contract gets, or whatever. Something about compatibility going up."
I nodded. "I see. So I've been meaning to ask, but what am I doing here? I know your mom wanted you to take Beel to the park to play, but shouldn't Hilda be here instead?"
"Huh? Cause I felt like it. Besides that blonde bimbo stayed home so she could watch soap operas with Misaki! That woman is useless!" Oga started off casually, but by the end, he sounded very annoyed.
"... Right, I'm leaving." I stood up and started walking off.
"Oh, come on, Taka. It's not like you have anything better to do." Oga called after me, clearly unbothered.
"Writing new chapters, making new martial arts, developing new magic, looking for a catalyst, so I might summon a servant," I turned back and listed off. "Believe it or not, I actually have things to do."
"Don't you use shadow clones to do that twenty-four-seven anyway?" He smirked. 'Fuck, he knows me too well.'
I sighed and sat back down. "You win this round."
Beel did not care about what we were saying. He was too focused on drinking from his bottle while staring at a dad playing with his daughter, lifting her up and tossing her gently into the air.
"What, you wanna do that too?" Oga asked. Beel nodded, clutching his bottle. I had no idea how a two-year-old was this aware of his surroundings or how he managed to communicate anything beyond crying, but somehow Beel always did. 'Maybe demons just have faster-developing minds?'
I watched as Oga then scooped Beel up with one arm, planted his feet, and, with all the care of a man tossing a football into the end zone, launched him skyward while shouting "upsy daisy!"
"Ahuu!" Beel squealed with pure joy as he sailed through the air. I stared at my idiot friend, waiting for that exact moment when his brain finally caught up to his actions and reminded him that gravity existed.
"Oh crap!" There it is.
Oga bolted forward, scrambling to catch the baby he had just thrown like a field goal, while I sat there contemplating every life choice that led me to this moment.
----
I arrived at where Oga was only to see him with Beel hanging off his back again, and his hands resting on the shoulders of a pretty girl. She wore a simple dress, a light purple bucket hat, and a pair of glasses. 'Oh, right. I completely forgot this was the day Oga unintentionally meets Kunieda.'
As I got closer, I heard words I never imagined would come out of Oga's mouth. "Please, do it with me."
I could see Kunieda blush, her whole body going stiff as she tried and failed to form a coherent response. "Ha... um... ehh..." She sounded like her brain had crashed and needed a hard reboot.
I should probably interrupt this so she does not spiral into thinking Oga actually likes her, but at the same time, the outcome of this interaction is gonna be so fucking funny... Let it ride, Taka.
----
Aoi Kunieda
'Did this guy just ask me to sleep with him? No, that is not possible, but he looks so serious.' Kunieda tried to steady her breathing, but her thoughts were a tangled mess. A handsome stranger had come out of nowhere and did this, and she did not even know his name. Her heart thudded uncomfortably as she tried to bring some discipline back into her mind.
"Um, this is very sudden." Kunieda forced the words out, trying to keep her voice polite and steady, but it came out weaker than she wanted.
That was when she finally noticed the baby on his back staring at her. His bright green eyes were fixed on her with an intensity she did not expect from a child that small. 'That kid is glaring at me. Hard.'
She shifted her head slightly to get a better look at the strangely judgmental baby, but when her eyes returned to the man, he was still standing there, patiently waiting for her answer.
"Um... I do not really know anything about you..." Kunieda managed, her voice small and unsure.
"Yeah, I don't know much either; that is the point. But you know how to do a park debut."
Her entire thought process screeched to a halt. "Eh? Ah? Huh?" Her blush vanished as confusion took over completely. The words made no sense. None. She felt like her brain had thrown up a white flag and walked off the battlefield.
'Whaa?' Kunieda's mind struggled to reboot. "... Park debut?"
"Park debut," he repeated with a firm nod, completely serious.
"S-so when you said please do it with me... this is what you meant?" Her head tilted to the side in confusion, her voice caught somewhere between relief and utter disbelief.
"Is there any other meaning?" He asked. Now he looked confused, which somehow made it worse.
'This motherfu...' Kunieda's thought cut off when she heard sudden laughter behind them.
A silver-haired teen stood a few steps away, hands in his pockets, barely keeping a straight face. "Wow, dude, I know you have zero clue when it comes to this kind of thing, but you don't just walk up to a woman you've never met and ask her that."
"Huh? What do you mean, Taka? I just asked her to do a park debut with me."
"That is not what you asked her, and the fact that you don't know that honestly concerns me." He deadpanned.
Kunieda looked between them, still pink in the face, still processing the emotional whiplash of the past thirty seconds.
"So who are you?" The guy she now knew as 'Taka' asked her.
"Oh, uh, I'm Aoi Kunie," she lied smoothly.
Whenever she was out taking care of her little brother, Kota, she used an alias and a simple disguise. Nobody could ever find out she was Aoi Kunieda, the leader of the most infamous girls-only gang in the entire district. If word got out, it would ruin the carefully balanced double life she had worked so hard to maintain.
"Right, Aoi Kunie." He gave her a smile that, for some reason, made her uneasy, very uneasy.
Taka then turned to Oga. "Alright, ima head out." He waved lazily and started walking away.
"Oi, Taka, what about the park debut!?" Oga shouted after him.
"I believe in you, buddy. Besides, unlike you and that girl, I don't have a toddler with me, so showing up at a park full of kids would give off the wrong vibes. See you at school on Monday." Taka gave a wave and left without looking back.
----
Takayuki Furuichi
Okay, I lied to them a little bit. I did not leave right away. Instead, I used an invisibility charm and watched those two idiots fumble their way through a park debut. The whole thing ended with Oga shoving a creepy cop into a trash can, and I damn near choked trying not to laugh out loud.
Naturally, I filmed the entire disaster and sent the video to Misaki, who found it just as funny as I did.
Now it was Monday, and we were back at school, but something was noticeably different. There were girls here. Normally, that would not mean much since this was a co-ed school, but ever since the term started two weeks ago, there had not been a single female in the building other than a few teachers and Hilda on occasion.
So seeing a whole group of them was… weird. The kind of weird that made every guy in the hallway stare like they had just spotted a rare animal in the wild.
"Hmm, looks like they're back," I said, sipping my coffee while Oga smacked the side of the vending machine to convince it to drop his.
"Huh, who?" Oga asked, still slapping the machine. I used a levitation spell and helped him before answering.
"The Red Tail. Looks like they are back from their expedition or whatever they were doing. I can't remember." While it was true I had a perfect memory, I still needed to actively think about the information I wanted. Small details like this were not exactly important, so half the time I did not bother storing them in the front of my mind.
"Red Tail? Haven't thought about them since Misaki graduated high school. Who did she give the leadership to again?" he asked while taking a slow sip of his coffee.
"Ringo Hojo, ya know, the bitch." I never liked Ringo. She was arrogant, manipulative, insecure, volatile, and unnecessarily cruel. When she joined the Red Tail in Misaki's third year of high school, she made a habit of being a total bitch whenever Oga and I came to the arcade to hang out.
She hated children, and even though we were only two years younger than her, she still labelled us as 'kids'. After Misaki, Shizuku, and Haruka graduated, we stopped going to the arcade. Not because of Ringo, since she could not have stopped us if she tried. We just were not close to the other members of Red Tail, so we did not care enough to keep hanging around with them.
"Oh, her, fuck, does that mean we gotta deal with her bullshit while at this school?" He sounded genuinely annoyed.
"Nah. I heard she transferred out of Ishiyama at the end of her first year, so now there is a new leader of Red Tail. Aoi Kunieda. People call her the Queen. Apparently, she is some swordsman prodigy as well." I said as we started walking.
"Oh, cool," Oga said, not really interested anymore. As we made our way to class, we heard louder voices from the hall we were moving towards.
We rounded a corner to see a pretty redheaded girl squared up against that weird purple suit-wearing guy, Shimokawa was his name, the one who always said "g'night". He was one of those minor characters Oga beat up when we were having lunch that one day.
"Let's go, I'll put you to sleep in five seconds, g'night." The redhead I knew was Nene Omori, mocked Shimokawa.
"Ohh. Then I'll beat you in three," Shimokawa responded, striking a pose that suggested he thought he looked cool. He didn't. He looked like a malfunctioning NPC winding up for a tutorial fight.
I took a sip of my coffee and leaned slightly toward Oga. "Ten bucks says she turns him into pavement seasoning."
Oga shrugged. "Who's she?"
"Nene Omori. Red Tail's second in command. Aggressive as hell. Hates most men. Which means you two are going to get along great."
He nodded like that made perfect sense. With him, it probably did.
Shimokawa jabbed a finger at her. "Prepare yourself. For the g'night special technique that has never been defeated."
"Is that the one where you get punched in the face?" Nene asked, not taking him seriously at all.
Shimokawa inhaled like he was about to unleash some ancient forbidden art. He lunged, but Nene moved first.
Her fist cracked against his jaw so fast the sound arrived before his body did. Shimokawa soared backward, spun twice midair, and face-planted on the tile with what could only be described as a sad little bonk.
He did not get up.
"Three seconds," she said, brushing her hair back. "I win."
The short girl I remembered as Chiaki clapped, the sound soft but oddly enthusiastic, and somehow managed to show genuine awe on her usually unreadable face. The guys in the hallway looked terrified, the kind of fear men get when they witness a woman who could fold them like a beach chair.
I was honestly a little surprised. Not at Shimokawa getting folded, that part was inevitable, but at the fact that the fight even happened in the first place. In the canon timeline, Kunieda stopped it before it could start, and Shimokawa retreated like a bitch the moment she stepped in.
Well, whatever, it doesn't matter. I tossed my coffee can into a nearby trash bin. "Ah, Ishiyama morning drama. Really hits the spot."
Then Nene's eyes flicked toward me. Sharp. Assessing. It wasn't a glare, more like she was checking if I was worth the oxygen in the room.
I gave her a little nod. 'She's hot, and I do so love redheads.'
She immediately narrowed her eyes at me like she heard my thoughts. I know she didn't. I have so many layers of mental fortitude built up over the years that it could keep god out.
Nene crossed her arms, now glaring at anyone who dared breathe wrong. "If any of you idiots try something, I'll put you beside the purple suit over there."
"G'night," Shimokawa groaned weakly from the floor.
"Well, now that's over, we have someone to find." Nene planted a hand on her hip as she turned to Kunieda, her expression sharpening a little. "Since we've been gone, there have been more than fifty people sent to the hospital. That includes Kanzaki getting thrown out a window and Himekawa getting brutally beaten." She gave a small shake of her head, like she still couldn't believe how fast things had gone to hell.
"This is all thanks to Tatsumi Oga and Takayuki Furuichi. If things keep going, then at this rate, Ishiyama will be destroyed. I don't care about the boys, but we have to protect the girls from their hidden claws. We need to bring the hammer down on them." Kunieda spoke with a kind of formal conviction, completely unaware that the very boys she was condemning were standing right behind her.
Well, I guess we should introduce ourselves, right?
"Hey, those guys you're looking for, I know where they are."
"And you are?" Nene shot me a glare sharp enough to peel paint. Kunieda finally looked over, and her eyes went wide the moment she saw Oga and I.
I glanced at him, then squared up with the smoothest smile I could manage.
"I'm Takayuki Furuichi, and this is Tatsumi Oga." I gestured at the guy with a baby sitting on his head. "Ya know, the terrifying monsters ruining the school."
Everyone just stared at us. Oga scratched his cheek. The baby burped. I held up my hand in a peace sign. "Hello there."
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