"NOT. ON.MY. FUCKING. WATCH!" I growled.
Didn't know why. Didn't care why. All I knew is that a friend was about to die.
And I was going to stop it.
That damn phrase echoing in my mind.
'You still have a heart'
I heard Eiji laugh behind me and turned back.
There was the smile. Not the smile of one accepting death this time.
The smile of accepting hope.
"You really know how to make an entrance huh?" he grinned and I grinned back.
"Yeah, I fucking guess I do!"
Mawata, on the other hand, didn't share the same expression. While dodging and hitting golems, she yelled at me "Ten! Something's seriously wrong with these golems! Like they're out for blood or something"
I wanted to say something… anything I usually would have said in this situation.
I didn't get to though.
Because the sky fell down.
Pressure. Heavy. Sure. Dangerous… in every way.
The kind of pressure weighing down on you that lets you know your life is in danger.
My life as a mercenary made me used to that kind of pressure so I didn't stop.
Mawata, on the other hand, didn't have that luxury.
And paid for it.
As that microsecond where she stopped passed. A golem, Ninety feet of stone and ominous red aura slammed into her, sending her flying almost straight towards the gate.
'She's gonna die.' A mocking voice in my head said over my shoulder. My voice, in my past life, but wielded by a faceless entity. Its breath felt against my neck as it taunted me. 'Another friend. Killed before your eyes. And you can't do shit about it' it laughed.
Before Mawata hit the ground, however, she was caught. She was conscious enough to see who it was and smiled upon noticing him.
The jet black hair and black eyes she's known most her life filled her vision.
Still, his body glowed a faint neon orange and emitted heat like nothing ever felt. Not blazing hot, not cold, but something reminiscent of both. Energy humming around him, shaped like tentacles that even seemed to radiate bloodlust.
His eyes glued to the swarm of golems far behind and breathing hard in rage.
Her best friend. Tensei Kurosaki.
The golems sprinted towards them, faster than they should be able to do in possibility, and swung hard and fast. Air pressure raising rocks and dust even before it hit the ground.
Still it only hit pure air and concrete and Tensei moved so fast he essentially teleported.
At the gate, he dropped Mawata and Eiji gently at the wall, ignoring the shocked expressions on everyone's faces as he showed up.
He shifted his focus to the golems and smiled. Not the smile of Tensei. Not for now.
He was Phoenix.
"You tried to hurt my friends. You have to go" he growled. The sentence punctuated by a sickening crunch and a severed golem head as Tensei swung.
He hadn't felt like this since he was reborn. It was like putting on an old, favorite glove. Relaxing when settled in.
Twisting to avoid a chop from a golem, he sprung upwards and kicked its head off, swiftly transitioning to an axe kick, splitting a nearby golem in two, and a roundhouse kick, slicing multiple golems in half at once.
'They are unnaturally fast, though, it doesn't matter if they cannot hit me' he thought as he ripped an arm off one of the golems and swung it at another, taking the head along and putting his palms over each other.
'Even still, they're too damn much' he spat as the world seemed to distort in between his palms. The air thickened and the temperature increased as a ball, like the one he made as a four year old in the exam room all those years ago, formed and enlarged.
Pushing it outward, it disintegrated everything in its path, erasing everything on contact.
Slowly moving it in a circle, it burst and burned through countless golems surrounding Tensei. Hundreds of golems destroyed with one attack that seemed to shake the world.
The ball dissipated but Tensei's anger did not as a golem slammed in the area where Tensei once was. Now?
He was two hundred feet in the air fist cocked as if to punch them from there.
But instead, he rapid punched the air and with each neon orange punch, giant orange fists appeared in the sky, fifty feet of pure neon energy over a fake city like the fist of God.
Now, fifty orange fists, pure heat, pure energy, pure static, suspended in the air, awaiting one command.
"DIE" Phoenix punched one last time.
The fists dropped faster than the speed of sound, detonating the instant it touched solid surface. Be it a building, tree, or golem, none of it survived the explosion.
The false city they were in? Levelled by a single attack by a single teen.
Everyone watched, speechless, as the attack erased all traces of any golem in its path. Even the announcer was left stammering into the microphone.
Landing safely and the killing intent wading off, he looked forward and saw everyone staring at him like he just became the sun, their mouths opening and closing like fishes out of water.
Realizing he used his powers. In front of everyone… he sighed.
"OH FUCK ME!!!"
MEANWHILE
A blonde haired man, the examiner, looking like he's in his middle ages staggered back. This can't be happening!
It's not supposed to go like this! That guy wasn't supposed to be that strong.
"I-I-I-I have to get away!" he yelled and scrambled out of the room he was watching the exam from.
Trying his best to run as fast as he could, he tried to think.
"O-Okay, I can meet up with KuroKami a-and maybe he'll forgive me. Hell, he might give me a nice power up" he laughed at the end.
Before he could get far enough, a short man drove a spear through his shoulder, severing his arm in the process.
"FUCK!" he cursed as he crashed into the ground, blood pooling around his frame, the smell of copper reaching his nose and white-hot pain shooting through his body.
Suddenly, it was like he fell into his shadow, disappeared to God-knows-where.
The short man laughed.
"Looks like he got away, huh? That could be bad."