As we vanished from cafe ,Lint's hand was already clawing his phone from his pocket. His fingers shook (rage, fear, betrayal, all at once) as he punched the emergency code.
"National Crime Agency, Special Response. This is Lint Hargrave, badge 0781. Code Black. Target: Akira Kurogane. Armed, fused with an unknown entity, extremely dangerous. I'm transmitting visual now. Flood every district in Tokyo. I want satellites, drones, helicopters—everything. This is not a request. This is an order. Move!"
He killed the call, shoved through the glass door so hard it spider-webbed, and sprinted to his matte-black interceptor. The engine snarled alive before his ass even hit the seat. Tires screamed, rubber burned, and the car rocketed into traffic like a bullet looking for a heart.
Through clenched teeth, Lint whispered to the empty passenger seat, "Forgive me, brother… but if I don't stop you, the streets will run red for decades."
Twenty kilometers away, I dragged Akira into the skeleton of an unfinished high-rise—steel bones exposed, concrete still wet in places. The night smelled of ozone and city rot.
Then the sky split open.
Five black helicopters dropped out of the clouds like iron vultures, searchlights stabbing down, turning rain into silver needles. A voice boomed from the lead bird, amplified until it rattled ribs:
"AKIRA KUROGANE. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO SURRENDER OR WE OPEN FIRE. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING."
Akira tilted his head back, rain streaking the blood on his cheek, and laughed—low, filthy, delicious.
He looked at me, eyes glittering obsidian. "Why isn't your teleport working, Lucifer?"
I leaned in, lips brushing the shell of his ear, voice velvet and venom. "Because even the devil has rules, darling. One teleport per fusion. Ten minutes of paradise. The clock's ticking—eight minutes left."
Instead of fear, a slow, obscene smile curved his mouth. He stepped into the open air, rain plastering his shirt to every hard line of muscle, and shouted up at the sky:
"Then you have ten minutes to catch a god."
The commander didn't hesitate. "Light him up."
The first round cracked—7.62 slammed into Akira's thigh. Blood sprayed, beautiful and bright. Any human would have dropped screaming.
Akira didn't even stagger.
He crouched, muscles coiling like panthers, and launched.
The jump was impossible. Thirty stories straight up, rain exploding off him in sheets. The shockwave of his takeoff shattered every window on the top five floors and peeled the roof off the building like the lid of a sardine can.
He caught the helicopter skid with one hand.
Metal screamed. The pilot jerked the stick; the bird lurched. Too late. Akira swung inside like he owned gravity itself.
Inside the cabin, ten elite operators stared at a nightmare wearing their friend's face.
Akira's voice dropped into something ancient, hungry. "I offered you ten minutes. Shame you're all so… fragile."
He raised his hand. Every rifle in the cabin glowed cherry-red and melted, slag dripping between their fingers. Screams—raw, animal—filled the air. The smell of burned flesh and molten steel was intoxicating.
He stepped to the commander, cupped the man's face almost tenderly, forehead to forehead.
"Look at me," Akira whispered. "I'm going to fix this rotting world. And everyone who stands in my way gets to be the first lesson."
His hand moved—too fast to track. A wet crunch. The commander's head left his shoulders and rolled across the floor like a dropped melon.
Panic detonated. Three operators dove out the open door rather than face him. Thirty stories. They chose the fall.
Akira grabbed the edge of the helicopter, muscles flexing, veins like cables under rain-slick skin, and flipped the entire machine over the roof. It hit with a thunderclap of fire and twisted metal. Flames roared up, licking the storm, turning rain into steam.
He walked through the inferno untouched, shirt burned away, chest gleaming, every step a promise of ruin.
More helicopters swarmed—twenty now—searchlights carving white tunnels through smoke. Tracers stitched the night crimson.
Akira had two minutes left on my clock.
He ran.
Not away—never away. Toward history.
He blurred from rooftop to rooftop, boots cracking concrete, laughing like a demon on honeymoon. Bullets chased him in furious red lines but kissed only air.
On the boulevard below, Lint's car fishtailed through traffic, siren dead, hazards flashing like a dying heartbeat. Sweat poured down his face; the wheel slick in his grip.
He ripped the loudspeaker from its cradle.
"AKIRA! I SWEAR ON MY LIFE—SURRENDER NOW AND NO ONE FIRES ANOTHER SHOT. YOU HAVE MY WORD!"
Akira heard him. Smiled. And in that moment the fusion snapped—ten minutes up.
He stumbled, suddenly human, suddenly bleedable. The leg wound reopened; blood sheeted down his calf. But he kept running, limping, laughing through the pain, ducking into a narrow alley choked with night-market crowds.
Lint slammed the brakes, tires smoking, abandoned the car in the middle of the street and gave chase on foot.
The hunt became intimate.
Akira vaulted a stall of grilled squid, grabbed a rusting fire escape, swung up. Lint followed—same moves, same brutal grace. They climbed the city like rival wolves.
Rain hammered down harder, turning everything into wet neon and adrenaline.
They burst onto the final rooftop—empty, endless sky, five helicopters hovering like angry gods, spotlights pinning Akira in a circle of blinding white.
Lint thirty feet away, gun raised, chest heaving.
"Akira. It's over."
Akira checked the cracked watch on his wrist—ten minutes exactly since the last fusion. He looked up, rain dripping from his lashes, and grinned like sin itself.
"Remember hide-and-seek when we were kids, Lint? You never fucking found me once."
He threw his head back and roared into the storm:
"LUCIFER!"
My name on his tongue was a key sliding home.
Power slammed into him so hard the rooftop buckled. Crimson flames erupted from his skin, eating the rain, turning it to red steam. The concrete beneath his feet spider-webbed, glowing orange. His eyes ignited—molten ruby—and the air itself screamed.
He spread his arms, shirt incinerating off his torso, every muscle carved in hellfire, rain hissing into nothing against his heat.
Voice no longer entirely human, layered with mine, he spoke to the sky, to the city, to every trembling soul watching:
"Today I declare war on your broken world. Step aside… or burn with it."
Then, softer, almost loving, to Lint:
"Adios, old friend. See you in hell."
Lint's lips peeled back in something between snarl and prayer. "Lucarious—ORDER: BLOCK TELEPORTATION!"
A new presence rippled the air—an angelic seal, chains of cold light snapping toward us.
Akira—no, we—turned, flames coiling like serpents, and laughed with both our voices braided together.
"Isn't this fun, fallen angel?"
Hellfire detonated outward in a perfect ring. The seal shattered like glass against a supernova.
And in the heartbeat before the flames swallowed everything—
We vanished.
Only the smell of brimstone and a single scorched playing card fluttering down through the rain remained—the queen of hearts, edges still burning.
Lint murmured , " Akira, once upon a time when we were just boys who thought monsters only lived under beds. Now one of them wore the monster like cologne."
Everyone got silent, except the drops of rain .
Lucarious looked up in the sky and murmured in a deep voice , barely audible, " it is fun, fallen Angel."