The roof of the academy was supposed to be quiet. It was supposed to be the one place where I could actually hear myself think.
I sat cross-legged near the edge, eyes closed, trying to synchronize my breathing with the ambient flow of the world around me. I was trying to reach a state where I could mentally bypass the psychological limiters of the human side of my body—achieving a sort of biological Nirvana. If I succeeded, I could theoretically access 100% of the Banshōman output without burning my own vessel to a crisp.
Inhale. Compress. Exhale. Expand.
CRUNCH.
The sound of a boot on gravel broke my concentration. My eyes snapped open. The ruby rings flared.
A lower-class Exorcist was standing by the access door, pretending to check his phone.
"Can I help you?!" I asked, my voice dripping with irritation.
"Just... routine patrol, Okumura," the guy stammered, avoiding my gaze.
"Right. Routine," I scoffed, standing up. "You've 'patrolled' this roof three times in the last twenty minutes. Be for real."
It had been like this since the trial. I couldn't go to the bathroom, the cafeteria, or even sleep without sensing a presence nearby. The Exorcists were all on edge.
They looked at me like I was a ticking time bomb. They were terrified of my elevation. They were so scared of what I was, they tried to drag me down to their level of fear and regulation.
Any normal person would have succumbed to their isolation. But I wasn't normal.
Truth be told, if it weren't for the constant monitoring, I actually wouldn't have minded being isolated. I was able to make progress with my training. I hadn't even attended cram school classes since getting back from that impromptu trial. Ed, Edd n Eddy (Bon and his group) had all gotten injured from the camp and were getting treatment, so classes were canceled for the time being. All my lessons now came from Shura.
Speaking of lessons…
I headed straight to the new training facility Mephisto had built. It was a reinforced concrete bunker designed to withstand absolute heat.
Shura was waiting for me, leaning against a wall of weapon racks.
"You're late," she said, tossing a wooden practice sword at me.
"I had to deal with another fan of mine," I said, catching it. "Being a celebrity is pretty taxing, you know."
"Get used to it," Shura said, drawing her own wooden blade. "To them, you're a weapon. You don't leave a loaded gun on the table unattended."
"I'm not the gun," I said, taking a stance. "I'm the guy holding it."
"Prove it. If you char that wood even a little bit, you're doing 500 pushups."
"Only 500?" I asked sarcastically. "Bring it."
We sparred. It wasn't about power; it was about restraint. Shura was as fast as ever, her strikes snake-like and unpredictable. My instincts flared and told me to just blow the room up—to use Sovereign Repulsion to blast her back—but I held it in.
I commanded the heat into the wood, not to burn. I compressed the carbon in the practice sword, forcing it to hit like steel without igniting.
CLACK. CLACK. THUD.
I parried her strike and stopped my blade an inch from her neck. The wood was hot to the touch, but not smoking.
"Passable," Shura admitted, lowering her weapon. "You're getting better at the simmer. But you're still angry. I can feel the heat leaking off you."
"Hard not to be angry when I'm living in a fishbowl," I retorted, tossing the sword aside.
"Patience, Chef," Shura smirked. "The pot needs to boil eventually. Just wait for the right ingredients."
The "right ingredients" turned out to be a boring assignment two days later.
"Coal Tar cleanup?" I asked, looking up at the dilapidated apartment complex. "Are you serious? I fought a Demon King last week. Now I'm a janitor?"
"It's an emergency clean up," Yukio said, adjusting his equipment belt.
He looked tired. He hadn't spoken to me much since the trial, and the bags under his eyes were dark enough to carry groceries.
"They've infested an old housing complex in North True Cross," he continued. "The cause is unknown, but there are injuries. Shura will be supervising you."
We arrived twenty minutes later. The air was thick with the miasma of Coal Tars, but this was a full-blown infestation.
A man was waiting for us by the police blockade. He was older, wearing the standard Exorcist coat, but his demeanor was humble, almost overly polite.
"Saburota Todo," Yukio introduced, saluting. "Senior Second Class Exorcist. Warden of the Deep Keep."
"Thank you for coming so quickly," Todo said, bowing slightly. His voice was soft, but something about him made the hairs on my arms stand up. Not a threat, exactly. Just... wrong. Like a dish that smelled fine but tasted sour.
Something's up with this bastard.
"We have a situation," Todo explained, gesturing to the building. "The Left Eye of the Impure King—a dangerous artifact kept in the Deep Keep—was stolen. We tracked the thief here."
" The Impure King?" Yukio stiffened, his face pale. "That relic carries a potent miasma. If it's released..."
"Thousands will die," Shura finished, lighting a cigarette. "Great."
I picked at my ear. "So, someone stole a dusty old…. what is it, a rock? Why are we panicking? Just go in and take it back."
Todo looked at me, a strange glint in his eyes. "You seem confident, Mr. Okumura. It is refreshing to see such spirit."
"It's not spirit," I said, bored. "It's common sense. You guys overcomplicate everything."
Before Yukio could lecture me on the severity of the situation, a woman burst through the police line. She was disheveled, crying, held back by two officers.
"Please! My son!" she screamed. "He's still in there! The man with the mask took him!"
Yukio stepped forward, his face sympathetic but professional. "Ma'am, please stay back. The area is contaminated. We will do everything in our power to locate him."
"We'll do what we can," the woman sobbed, collapsing. "That's what you always say!"
I stepped past Yukio.
"Aye, wipe your tears," I said, looking down at her. Then I pointed a thumb at the building. "I'll get your kid back."
The woman looked up, stunned by the absolute certainty in my voice.
"I should go too. I'm responsible for this so I want to assist," said Todo, adorning a hazmat suit.
"Alright, let's move," Shura ordered. "I'll secure the perimeter and set up a barrier to keep the Coal Tars contained. You three head inside and flush out the thief."
We entered the building. It was dark, the hallways choked with floating black specks of Coal Tars. The air tasted metallic.
As we climbed the stairs, Todo walked behind us.
"You two are the Okumura brothers, yes?" Todo asked softly. "The youngest Exorcist genius... and the son of our greatest enemy."
"You know we're twins right?" I asked, keeping my eyes forward.
Why does everyone seem to gloss over that? If I'm the son of Satan, so is he.
"Really? That's interesting," Todo continued. "It must be difficult for you, Yukio. To work so hard, to follow every rule, only to be constantly overshadowed by a brother who was born with power one could only dream of."
Huuuuuuuh?! Where the fuck did that come from?! I thought as I side eyed him.
Yukio stiffened. His hand trembled over his holster.
"Mr. Todo," Yukio warned, his voice tight. "You should be focusing on the mission."
"But it is the mission," Todo whispered.
There's no way this boring-looking mutherfucker is a villain. There's just no way, I thought. I don't even remember him from the original timeline.
We reached the fourth floor. A masked man stood over an infected young boy, holding a flask with a circular object.
Yukio drew his gun. "Move away from the boy!"
The masked man didn't move. He just collapsed, melting into a pile of black sludge. The flask clattered to the floor, and the object rolled out.
Yukio carefully moved towards it and picked up the object—now identified as the Left Eye.
"It's a fake," Yukio gasped.
"Precisely," Todo's voice changed. The humility vanished, replaced by a rasping, manic delight. "A diversion."
I spun around and saw Todo smiling. Not a polite smile, but a predator-like smile.
"The Left Eye wasn't stolen by him," Todo said, kicking the pile of sludge aside. "I stole it. Or rather, I stole a fake to keep you busy while my associates took the real one."
"You're Fallen," Yukio realized, aiming his gun at Todo.
"I am liberated!" Todo laughed. He ripped off his Hazmat suit, revealing a body pulsing with demonic energy. "All I have to do now is buy a little more time."
"Buying more time? Against me? You must be a comedian." I said, dashing towards him in an instant, fist adorned in flames.
Todo's eyes widened at the speed at which I got to him. He tried to block, but he was too slow.
POW.
I threw a straight right at his chest. The impact sounded like a cannon blast, sending him stumbling backward. I didn't let him breathe. A right hook, a spinning backhand, and finally, a Comet-Strike High Kick—legs and feet engulfed in flames.
BOOM.
Todo went skidding across the room, smashing into the concrete wall.
"Wow, you really are a monster," he wheezed, catching his breath and wiping blood off his face.
"You ain't seen nothing yet," I retorted, cracking my knuckles.
Todo rose to his feet, swaying slightly. "I might actually get killed if I'm not careful here, so this is where we end things off," he said.
He slammed his hands together. A heavy wall of miasma erupted from the floor.
"Yukio, cover your nose!" I shouted.
I sprinted towards Todo, flaring my blue flames as a shield, punching through the smoke to clear the air with a burst of Absolute Heat.
But when the air cleared, Todo was gone.
I looked back at Yukio. He was frantically working on the boy, his hands shaking. He looked at me, then at the spot where I had effortlessly dispatched the enemy he was terrified of.
His left eye was bloodshot. It throbbed violently, and I could see the vein pulsing beneath the skin.
It's reacting to my power, I thought. Interesting.
"Aye, focus, Four-Eyes!" I snapped, though I kept my voice steady. "Save the kid. I chased off the trash."
Less than half an hour later, the area was swarming with reinforcements. Mephisto arrived in a puff of pink smoke, looking far too cheerful for a crime scene.
"Oh dear, oh dear," Mephisto tutted, poking the empty decoy flask with his umbrella. "It seems we've been bamboozled."
"Todo is a traitor," Yukio reported, standing up. The boy was stable and being loaded into an ambulance, but Yukio looked like he was about to pass out from exhaustion. "He used this location to distract us."
"Indeed," Mephisto nodded, his expression shifting to something sharper. "While you were playing tag here, the real Left Eye of the Impure King was stolen from the Deep Keep."
"What?" Shura stepped up, wiping Coal Tar slime off her boot. "So the Eye is gone?"
"Yes, and the thieves attempted to steal the Right Eye. If they unite them, the Impure King will be revived, and Kyoto will become a rotting wasteland."
"Alright, let's go," I said, stepping forward and cracking my knuckles. "We're burning daylight."
Mephisto held up a gloved hand, stopping me in my tracks. "Not you, Rin."
"Excuse you?" I raised a brow.
"You are still under probation," Mephisto reminded me, tapping his chin. "Sanctioned or not, The Vatican is already breathing down my neck about the forest incident. I am assembling an elite retrieval unit to go to retrieve the left eye. You have been assigned... other duties. Namely, staying out of sight."
"You gotta be kidding me," I deadpanned. "I just wiped the floor with that geek. I'm the strongest you've got."
"And the most volatile," Mephisto countered, his eyes losing their mirth. "Stay here, be a good little student, and don't make me add more guards to your rotation."
Man, I hate this annoying bastard.
He vanished in a cloud of smoke before I could argue further.
Eh, whatever, I waved off.
Later that night, I was in the academy's commercial kitchen, taking my boredom out on a slab of A5 Wagyu. If I wasn't going to Kyoto, I was going to perfect my demi-glace. I hovered my hand over the cast-iron skillet, using a micro-fraction of my heat to sear the meat with absolute, edge-to-edge precision. No stove needed; just my intent rendering the fat perfectly.
The doors swung open and Shura walked in dressed in heavy combat boots, a utility belt loaded with supplies, and a thick, reinforced Exorcist trench coat worn open over her usual bikini top to keep her seals accessible.
"I'm heading out," she said, leaning against the stainless-steel prep table and snagging a piece of chopped meat. "Kyoto unit leaves in an hour."
"Have fun," I said, not bothering to look away from the skillet. "Send me a postcard while you're at it."
"Don't be a baby," Shura sighed, stealing another piece of meat. "You're going to Kyoto too, idiot."
I stopped mid-sear. The sizzling quieted. "What?"
No, really, what?
"Mephisto can't officially send you as an Exorcist," she explained, checking the edge of her blade under the fluorescent lights. "But he can assign the Exwires to help with support and logistics. That includes you. You're coming with us."
"Finally," I muttered, killing the heat and wiping my hands on a towel. "Something sensible."
I looked at her gear. She was checking her weapons, moving with a stiffness she tried to hide. My eyes drifted to the tattoo on her chest and stomach—the dark blue snake scale pattern she used to store the Kurikara and her own blade.
"Hey, Shura," I asked, tossing the towel aside. "How do I get one of those?"
"One of what?" she asked, not looking up.
"Those tattoos. The storage seals. It'd be better to store the sword in my body instead of carrying it around like a nerd."
Shura flinched. She pulled her jacket closed quickly, her hand hovering over her stomach. "You don't want this, kid. Drop it."
"Why?" I pressed, stepping closer to the prep table. "It's efficient. Teach me the seal."
"It's not a technique you learn!" she snapped, backing away. "It's... complicated. Just drop it."
I narrowed my eyes and activated Soul Sight.
I got a good look at how the Ink functioned, and was able to see a void sucking the life force right out of her core.
"Oh that's bad," I said aloud. "It's shortening your lifespan."
Shura froze. Her defensive anger vanished, replaced by a hollow, tired look. "All you need to know, is that it's a blood contract with a Dragon God. And it's unbreakable, so don't worry about it."
"You're dying," I stated, my voice calm. "You're gonna die young and hot."
"We all die," she deflected, turning to leave the kitchen. "That's life."
I reached out and grabbed her arm. My hand was warm, radiating the limitless, controlled power of a Flame God.
"I can burn it off," I said.
Shura's eyes widened. "What?"
"The contract is just spiritual information woven into your cells." I said staring into her eyes. "I can see the structure, target the binding spell without burning you, and erase the pact."
She stared intensely at me, searching for a lie.
"You think you can burn a pact with a God?" she asked, her voice wavering between skepticism and a desperate, hidden hope. "Just like that?"
"Think? I know I can," I said effortlessly. "Besides, what's a Snake God to the Sun itself?"
Shura let out a breathy laugh, a sound that was half-disbelief, half-hope. She stepped into my space, her chest pressing against me.
"Rin," she murmured, her tone a dangerous mix of a threat and a promise. "If you can actually do that... if you can burn this off my skin without turning me to ash or getting me killed."
She grabbed the collar of my 4-way waist apron, pulling me down towards her face, her eyes flashing fiercely.
"Then I'll owe you my life," she said.
"Your life you say? Just how much of that am I getting?" I asked, smile never leaving my face.
"All of it," she responded, not breaking eye contact. "Pull this off, and I'm yours."
I grinned, the ruby rings in my eyes glowing softly.
"Ight, bet."