A hundred meters or so from the Saeki house, outside the alley, the black TV-station van sat quietly at the curb.
The driver was a middle-aged man in his forties with the perfectly ordinary surname Sato. He wore a wrinkled jacket and slouched against the driver's seat, waiting for Ago and Azuki to come back.
THUD!
A dull, heavy crash, like something massive slamming into a floor, rolled out of the alley. Sato straightened up without thinking, rolled down the window, and stuck his head out to look.
"What's going on?"
The night was murky, the alley deep. He shouldn't have been able to see anything at all from this distance, and yet, far down the alley, a faint gray-white glow had begun to shine.
CRAAASH!
Another sound, like timber snapping, mixed with the muffled boom of something heavy collapsing.
After that, the noise only grew louder. This book debuts on Tiantian Novels, super convenient, ttks.tw readable anytime, offering you error-free chapters and correctly ordered chapters for your reading experience.
Heavy impacts, the roar of splitting walls, some low, inhuman bellow, laced with the faint shriek of a woman, all of it spreading outward from the Saeki house, shattering the ink-black quiet.
Something was definitely off.
Sato came fully alert.
At the same time, lights flicked on in several nearby houses. Residents along the alley and the street had been woken by the racket, and one after another they pushed open doors and windows, trying to see what was happening outside.
After all, as the noise grew, it had long since stopped sounding like an ordinary domestic quarrel or construction work.
"What the hell is that racket?"
"Over there… the Saeki house? Hasn't that place been empty for ages?"
"The Saeki house? Isn't it the Tokunaga house?"
"The Tokunagas moved in later. That whole family got wiped out precisely because they moved into the Saeki house."
"So the cursed-house legend is true?"
"That massacre a dozen-odd years back, the family of three who died are still in that house, killing everyone who dares live there. That's not some ghost story made up to scare kids."
"That noise doesn't sound like any ghost or vengeful spirit. Sounds more like there's a monster in there."
…
The murmuring spread, rustling from mouth to mouth.
More and more people came out of their homes, gathering at the mouth of the alley and in their own doorways, craning their necks toward the dark depths of the lane.
The light from the direction of the Saeki house flared and dimmed, accompanied by an unbroken run of crashes and collisions, and now and then a whimper or a howl that could have come from a human or a beast. It left everyone uneasy.
No one was more uneasy than Sato. Listening to the neighbors talk, he felt his palms start to sweat.
But he was the one who had brought Ago and Azuki here. If something really had happened, his job was finished.
Sato worked up his courage, got out of the van, and walked into the alley.
The alley was dark. Only that distant house leaked a ghastly pale light, swaying, throwing writhing shadows across the alley walls.
By that eerie white glow and the moonlight, Sato could see straight to the end of the alley, and his stomach dropped, because there was no sign of Ago or Azuki anywhere.
A terrible suspicion took shape in the back of his mind.
Ago and Azuki couldn't be inside that house, the one that looked like it was being torn down by force… could they?
No! No, no! Absolutely not!
Sato drew a deep breath, praying silently, and step by step approached the house pouring out that strange white light and noise.
Cold night air slid down his collar. He hunched his shoulders and slowed his pace. The chatter at the alley mouth behind him faded, replaced by the steadily louder pounding of his own heart.
"Come on, let's go see!"
Seeing someone take the lead into the alley, a few of the bolder young men followed.
Most people, after all, run on herd instinct and a taste for spectacle, and there's safety in numbers. So a good number of locals filed into the alley one after another, wanting to see exactly what was going on.
When Sato finally dragged himself to the front of the Saeki house, the sight in front of him made him suck in a breath of cold air.
The old detached house was being ripped apart from within by chaotic, violent white light. The walls kept bulging outward and bursting open in gaping holes, shattered brick and splintered wood spraying out as if driven by explosions. The whole structure groaned, as if some caged beast were hurling its raw strength against the bars.
Stranger still: through the broken walls and collapsed sections, he could see a blurred white giant, three or four meters tall, its build enormous, swinging its arms and colliding with something. Its brutal movements unleashed a savage force, every motion dragging a violent gust of wind behind it, smashing into wall or floor and triggering fresh collapses.
Just behind and to the side of that glowing giant, Sato caught sight of a familiar back.
That gaudy, eye-searing stage costume… that was Ago, of the Twilight Kintoki duo!
"A… Ago-san?"
Sato's heart hammered and his legs went soft.
What in God's name was that thing?!
"What the hell is that?"
One of the young men who'd followed him in shouted exactly what Sato was thinking.
"Is that a psychic battle?"
"What kind of ghost story is this supposed to be?"
"So superpowers really do exist!"
"The legendary hidden world nobody knows about! Am I about to become the protagonist?"
…
The crowd behind him stared wide-eyed at the scene inside the house, unable to keep the commentary in.
They had crept in with their hearts in their throats, thinking of the strange tale everyone repeated, expecting some terrifying haunting.
And instead? Destruction on this scale belonged in a battle anime. What ghost could ever wreck a place like that?
For a moment every face there was lit with excitement and shock. To the perpetually chuunibyou youth of Japan, this was clearly a glimpse of the true shape of the world, a clash between espers who lurked in the shadows, witnessed by sheer dumb luck.
Watching the scene unfold, Sato had no idea what to do. His hand went to his phone on its own, meaning to report to the station.
Because there was no way he was walking into a place that dangerous to drag Ago out.
He didn't even bother scrolling for a number. He hit the most recent call, the station's logistics desk, and it connected fast.
"Sato? Calling out of nowhere. What's the situation with Ago and Azuki? Is it sorted, or are they not making it to the station on time?"
On the other end, the staffer's voice carried its usual impatience, the noise of the studio bleeding through behind it.
The broadcast was nearly due to start. If Ago and Azuki didn't get back soon, tonight's show would have to be scrapped.
"The situation… the situation… I don't know! Ago-san and Azuki-san went into some alley, and then there was this huge noise, like a demolition, and I ran over to look, and there's a glowing giant tearing the house apart! I don't see Azuki-san! Ago-san looks like… like she's facing that thing down? No, she's…"
His words tumbled out backward and sideways, leaving the man on the other end completely lost. "What giant? Sato-san, be clear! What are you—"
At that moment, from the direction of the Saeki house's living room, a blaze of blue-white light erupted!
The glare was so brilliant that it drowned out every other gray-white flicker in the house, and yet it carried something ferocious in it.
His eyes snapped toward it.
Within the light, a colossal red-and-silver body took shape, its outline sharp and clear: a broad chest plate, a keen blade jutting from its head, huge eyes that seemed to burn with light…
Sato's mouth fell open. The phone slipped from his palm and he didn't react at all. He stood there staring blankly at the vast figure rising out of the blue-white glow, his mind wiped clean, every noise around him receding into the distance.
And he wasn't alone. The young men who had been watching with such excitement a moment ago, waiting for their brand-new lives to begin, were frozen where they stood as if pinned by a binding spell, gaping at the sight before them.
"Hello? Sato-san? Hello?! What's happening? Say something!"
The phone crackled with frantic shouting.
"Sato-san? What did you see? Do we need to call the police?"
Several seconds passed before Sato jolted, like a man waking from a nightmare. He picked up the phone with shaking hands and put it to his ear, his voice dry, dazed with disbelief.
"…Ultraman."
"What?"
"Ultraseven!"
Sato repeated it in a murmur, eyes still locked on the giant inside the house.
"I'm seeing… Ultraseven!"
On the other end, in the station's office, the staffer listening through the receiver furrowed his brow tighter and tighter. Around him, several colleagues paced back and forth in agitation, waiting for a straight answer.
"So what's actually going on?"
One of them saw the odd look on the man's face and asked at once.
"He says… he's seeing Ultraman," the man on the phone said quietly, covering the mouthpiece, caught somewhere between laughing and despairing.
"Hang on, has he lost his mind?"
His colleague blinked, his face twisting strangely, with no idea how to respond.
"Sato-san!" The man turned back to the phone, his tone hardening. "Please calm down and tell me exactly what's happening! Are Ago and Azuki-san in some kind of trouble? Do you want us to call the police right now?"
In the alley, Sato's eyes were stretched round.
Inside the house, the red-and-silver giant, Delusion Ultraseven, moved.
It let out a low, inhuman roar, its right arm whipping out, its fist tearing the air as it slammed into the chest of the white Ikiryo giant opposite!
BOOM!!!
The blast left Sato's eardrums numb. The light of the white giant's chest caved inward in a huge crater, countless motes of white spraying out like sparks, its massive frame lifted clean off the ground and hurled backward.
CRAAASH!!!
The white giant crashed straight through the already tottering wall between the living room and the kitchen. Brick, stone, and wood splinters went up in a column of dust.
Delusion Ultraseven didn't pause. It strode after it, lifted a foot, and brought it down on the head of the white giant before it could rise!
THOOM!!!
The ground bucked. The white giant's head was stamped down beneath the floorboards, the planks around it fracturing and sinking in a spiderweb pattern. More white light burst loose, and the giant's body visibly shrank.
It was obvious. That white giant couldn't trade even a few blows with Delusion Ultraseven. A handful more strikes and it would be shattered outright.
"I'm not crazy! I can see it clearly! That's really Ultraman! Ultraseven!"
Sato clenched the phone, eyes fixed on the interior of the house, or rather, there was barely an interior left. That single-family home was close to being demolished entirely.
The sheer violence of a thing that broke walls and buildings with the smallest gesture rattled him to the bone, and he described what he was seeing in a tone of stunned, incredulous awe.
Silence fell on the other end of the line, nothing but rapid breathing. The station staff there seemed to be weighing whether Sato had genuinely snapped.
A few seconds later, a steadier voice took over the call. "Sato, this is the show's director. Are you certain you're in a normal state of mind right now? If you are, I want you to tell us your location, and I want you to record the evidence."
"I'm in Nerima Ward…"
Sato rattled off the address, then paused, confused.
"Evidence?"
"In the trunk of your van there's a Sony DVCAM digital video camera, model DSR-250, and a few Mini DV tapes. Your technique doesn't have to be good. You can manage basic shooting, can't you? You're a veteran. You've helped out with this sort of thing before."
"Right… right!"
Sato remembered. For times when the station needed to grab supplementary location footage on short notice, every outbound van was equipped with exactly that kit.
"Now, take that camera and record everything you can get on film! Understand?"
"I…"
Sato hesitated. He didn't agree right away.
For no other reason than that Delusion Ultraseven's power was simply too overwhelming. By the time he got back with the camera, the white giant would already be pulverized, wouldn't it?
And then his hopes rose.
Ago was standing not far from the white giant, her body wrapped in a pale glow, screaming something at the red-and-silver figure. Her hands flailed wildly, and the light pouring off her flowed toward the pale giant.
As she moved, the pinned white giant seemed to draw strength from it, the ruinous damage to its body knitting back together.
It struggled, trying to shove Delusion Ultraseven's foot away with its arm.
Sato was overjoyed at the sight. He knew Ultraman's enemies were never the good guys, but if that monster could hold out a little longer, so much the better.
He spun around, shouldered through the crowd still standing there dumbstruck, and ran for the street.
What he didn't stay to see was that against Delusion Ultraseven, regeneration of that caliber meant nothing.
Delusion Ultraseven seemed to have been provoked. It bent down, seized one of the white giant's arms with both hands, and wrenched!
RIIIIP!!
The entire arm tore free. From the severed stump an ocean of pale light-motes gushed out like air from a burst balloon. Then came another punch, blowing the white giant's head apart and driving straight through the outer wall of the room, so that the already tottering wall simply collapsed.
It was a slaughter, not a fight, and a brutally violent, visually staggering one at that. Delusion Ultraseven cared nothing for the damage it did to its surroundings. With every gesture, the entire ground floor of the Saeki house came closer to being leveled.
The walls were riddled with gaping holes, the ceiling sagging and caving in, fragments of furniture and structure carpeting the floor. Every punch it threw hurried the house toward total disintegration.
____
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