~POV Change~
"Rias, dear?"
She gave a nod, but her eyes didn't leave the ones staring back at her from the screen.
"Rias, what are you— Rias!"
Her mother's cold hand suddenly covered her eyes.
"Mom!! I was watching that~"
She squirmed as she felt herself being lifted, her mother's voice firm in her ear.
"You shouldn't be watching things like that. Go get your brother for dinner, okay?"
Groaning as she was carried out of the living room and set down in the hallway, she gave a reluctant nod.
"Fine..."
She watched her mother disappear into the room, waited a moment... then peeked back around the wall. Her eyes locked on the screen just as the sound returned.
["A week after the boy— no, man was identified, he sent a message not just to the police force, it seems, but to everyone around."]
The broadcast shifted from a human news anchor to an image the Mundane wouldn't normally have access to—an uncensored photo of corpses strung up.
all with their backs flayed open.
Beneath the image were words she vaguely remembered from her teachers.
["The sound of the Gion Temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things."]
The voice was aged and deliberate, as the scene cut to an older police officer giving a public report.
["Currently, the detectives and psychologists are coming to the same conclusion that the police—and everyone watching at home—have already realized. This man is a religious radicalizednut."]
"Rias!"
She jumped as someone grabbed her from behind.
"Onii-sama!"
A hearty chuckle came from him as he hoisted her onto his shoulder and carried her back into the living room. But as they entered, she watched in slow motion as the smile on his face slowly faded into a frown.
["As the days pass and the count rises, it's clear that this man will soon reach a record kill count of 'thirty' by the end of the week."]
-
~Kazuya POV~
"Really?"
I looked down at the growing horror on a young man's face. He was frantically jabbing a taser into my side — and I was completely unfazed.
He tried to backpedal.
Didn't get far.
Two bullets to the knees ended that.
"I mean, everyone around you is dead." I said, gesturing with the gun. "So instead of running like a smart person, you come at me… with a taser?"
I pointed to the knife sticking out of my neck, then to another lodged in my midsection.
"You watched me heal from being stabbed. Fuck, why am I even bothering?"
Ignoring his screams, I put a final bullet into his skull. His body dropped, twitchless.
I glanced around the convenience store I was currently trashing.
'Ah—there it is.'
I made my way to a door tucked in the back that led downward. As I descended the steps, I mulled over my blatant, short-sighted plan.
As I had said before, I hadn't waited for Mizuki and Weiss to link up so I could kill them both in one go. No. I just took the opportunity and put Mizuki down when I had the chance. And now? That whole dramatic "act" I had planned wouldn't work — not on Weiss, and definitely not on anyone connected to the Elders.
So, plan B.
Something no coward could ignore, piss them off.
Running a gang took money. Even if said gang had shady backdoor deals with the government, they still needed income.
So the idea was simple, work my way up from the small time gangs under Elder Keiji Fujiwara, tearing through their cash flow. Every busted deal, every ruined shipment, every dead lieutenant.
'Though that wouldn't be enough to make him show himself.'
But it'd snowball.
Assuming he got reports — and someone like him would — he'd eventually get annoyed enough to send a team after me. All I had to do was kill them. Wait for more. Kill them, too. Repeat the cycle until the so-called "leaders" had no choice but to crawl out of whatever gilded holes they hid in.
Reaching the last step, I kicked open the locked door. Inside, I found what they were hiding.
-
Prying open the nearest box, I found packets of cigarettes. I pocketed a few, then moved on.
The next crate held guns.
Another with bullets.
'Nice little armory they had down here.'
"If I were wise." I muttered. "I'd have my contact collect all this shit."
But I wasn't going to bother.
Instead, I made my way to the last box.
'Dynamite. Jackpot.'
I grabbed a lighter, sparked it, lit a stick, and dropped it like a mic before sprinting the fuck out of the room.
'Hopefully this'll get whoever's in charge to come out and greet me.'
A boom rocked the hallway.
My eardrums popped.
A blast of heat licked up my back as a shockwave launched me off my feet.
I hit a window with a grunt, spitting out whatever the hell I'd eaten earlier.
BOOM
I was blasted straight through the window and slammed into a lamppost. A few bones cracked on impact—then healed almost instantly.
'...Should've thought that through better.'
Groaning, I stood up, feeling the wind on my bare back... and bare ass. Both already healed, of course.
Cracking my shoulders back into place, I glanced at the wrecked building — barely standing.
I nodded.
"That'll get their attention."
-
I sat cross-legged on a ragged couch, sipping from a juice box as a crappy TV played footage of my most recent... activities.
'Wonder if their plan to stop me was just to show my face to the public?'
I yawned loudly, stretched and got to my feet.
'Though I wonder how long they've been watching me?'
I wasn't sure exactly when it started, but at some point, I'd felt it — eyes on me. Couldn't say where from, couldn't even pin down a direction, but my instincts knew. I'd been watched.
And not just recently.
They'd been there longer than I'd realized.
'Doubt I'll catch them tonight either.'
Clicking my tongue, I sighed.
A moment later, a black cat wandered in from another room, tail swishing lazily. It gave me a judgmental look before trotting over.
I scooped it up much to its protest and carried it to the table piled with plastic bags of food. Setting the cat down, I cracked open a tin of tuna, downed half then placed the rest in front of it.
'Guess females are the same across any species.'
I plopped into the chair across from her and opened another tin, chewing as I watched her eat in silence.
"Would've thought you were the one watching me, if I hadn't already checked you, Roadkill."
I smirked at the memory of how I found her, half-dead in an alley.
Downing another can, I cracked open a third and pushed it her way.
"Whatever. I'll figure it out soon. They're bound to slip up eventually."