Three Weeks After the Battle of Control
The classroom buzzed with the low hum of morning chatter—pages flipping, chairs creaking, and the occasional burst of laughter from the corner desks. But at the back of the room, where sunlight barely reached and no one dared to sit too close, three boys shared a silence louder than the noise around them.
Shotaro Mugiwara, stoic as ever, leaned back in his chair with arms folded and eyes half-lidded, as if the entire world bored him. Hiroki, sitting beside him, tapped a pen against his notebook without writing a single word. And on the other side sat Bird—no, Zenkichi Gojo—the former bully turned uncertain ally.
It had been three weeks since the Battle of Control.
Three weeks since fists spoke louder than words, and buried truths had clawed their way to the surface.
None of them had talked much about it.
Not really.
They showed up. Sat together. Ate lunch. Trained. Laughed a little more than before. But under the surface? A storm still brewed—quiet, unpredictable.
"...This class is shit," Zenkichi muttered, his eyes flicking lazily toward the blackboard where faded chalk lines battled for space among half-erased philosophical jargon.
The teacher's voice droned on at the front, slow and measured—less like a lecture, more like a meditative chant.
Hiroki snorted, not looking up from his notebook, where he had drawn a very unphilosophical doodle of a squirrel holding nunchaku. "You say that every day."
"Yeah, and it keeps being true."
Shotaro didn't respond. But the slight quirk tugging at the corner of his mouth said more than words ever could.
At the front of the room stood Professor Herr Wittgenstein, the Swiss philosophy teacher who somehow managed to look both like a monk and a retired jazz pianist.
His long, silvery hair was tied loosely behind his back, strands escaping now and then to frame his sun-kissed face. Round, tinted glasses sat low on the bridge of his nose, revealing calm, glacier-blue eyes that seemed to look through reality rather than at it.
He wore an oversized linen shirt the color of aged parchment, sleeves rolled casually to his elbows. A beaded mala bracelet jingled softly with every flick of his wrist as he gestured toward a slowly unraveling diagram of Apophatic Theology—a tangled mess of arrows, crossed-out terms, and one small doodle of a goat with wings.
"…to understand the divine," he said, voice low and smooth, like stones rolling in a river, "you must first accept that you cannot understand the divine. Mmm… delicious paradox, no?"
He smiled to himself, as if he'd just recalled a clever line from a poem that no one else had read.
"The monad is not the one. The one is not the monad," he continued, casually pacing barefoot across the tatami-matted dais he insisted on using instead of a podium. "Plato would call it the form of forms. Laozi might sip tea and say nothing at all. Both are right."
Students blinked slowly. Some stared at their notes in existential confusion. Others—like Hiroki and Zenkichi—barely pretended to care.
But Shotaro? Shotaro listened.
Maybe not with wide eyes or hurried scribbles, but the slight tilt of his head, the way his crimson gaze followed the professor's movements—it was the kind of attention he gave only when something truly intrigued him.
Wittgenstein paused, glancing out the window where cherry blossoms fluttered lazily in the breeze.
"Let's take ten," he said finally, reaching for the clay teapot on his desk and pouring himself a cup without ever stopping his lecture flow. "Use this time to meditate on nothing. Or something. Or… what lies between."
Then he sipped.
The classroom exhaled in collective relief as conversations stirred and chairs creaked.
Zenkichi leaned over to Hiroki. "I swear, man, he's either the most enlightened dude alive or high as hell on sage incense."
Hiroki smirked. "Or both."
Shotaro exhaled softly, eyes still fixed on the board.
"There's something honest about him," Shotaro murmured, his voice low, almost swallowed by the murmurs of the classroom.
Zenkichi arched a brow, arms crossed behind his head. "You're saying you actually like this philosophical mumbo jumbo?"
Shotaro didn't answer immediately. Instead, he gazed at the drifting cherry blossoms outside the window, a quiet smirk curling at the edge of his lips. It was the kind of smile that made people nervous. The kind that said, I'm thinking of something dangerous.
Finally, he spoke. Calm. Clear. Dead serious.
"I think," Shotaro said, "we've been just the three of us for too long."
Hiroki glanced over. "What are you getting at, Aniki?"
Shotaro's crimson eyes gleamed, a glint of mischief cutting through their usual stoicism.
"I think the Ronins need some lady power."
Zenkichi blinked. "Why?"
Shotaro didn't miss a beat.
"So someone can finally do the fucking dishes."
For a split second, silence reigned.
Then—
"PFFFFTTTT—"
Zenkichi slammed a hand against the desk, nearly tipping over in his chair. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Hiroki doubled over, gasping between wheezes. "BROOOOOO!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!"
Even a couple of students nearby turned their heads, startled by the sudden explosion of chaos in the back row.
"HAHAHAHAHA—DUDE, YOU CAN'T—YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE—!"
Shotaro simply leaned back in his seat, sipping his tea with the serene detachment of a mountain sage who'd just dropped a spiritual bomb on a crowd of mortals.
The room was still reverberating from the blast of laughter that had detonated moments before.
Professor Wittgenstein, halfway through a tangent on non-dualism and the monad's elusive relation to transcendental forms, paused mid-sip of his jasmine tea. He raised a curious brow but said nothing—his silence the mark of a man who understood the necessity of chaos in the pursuit of enlightenment.
Shotaro simply leaned back in his seat, sipping his tea like a wandering sage who had just uttered a prophecy destined to shake nations—unbothered, unshaken, and entirely too smug for someone who had just detonated a gender joke worthy of an interdimensional HR complaint.
Professor Wittgenstein, from his sandalwood-scented sanctum at the front of the class, raised a single, well-groomed brow. He said nothing. Only sipped his own tea in silent camaraderie. Philosophy, after all, was chaos dressed as wisdom.
"We'll call that woman-only branch the Sandwich Septons," Shotaro wheezed, barely able to hold back his laughter.
"How about the Laundry Lords?!" Hiroki howled, nearly kicking his desk over as he slapped the table with both hands.
"No, no—THE KITCHEN KNIGHTS!!" Bird screamed, collapsing onto the floor, cackling so hard he curled into himself like a dying shrimp.
Their combined laughter detonated like a bomb in the classroom. The other students turned their heads. Some giggled. Some gasped. A few looked around, unsure whether they were allowed to laugh. The back row—the territory of the Red-Eyed Ronins—was in full riot.
And then—
A shadow rose.
From three rows ahead, a desk scraped sharply against the tile floor, the sound cutting through the laughter like a guillotine falling on silence.
She stood.
Amaya Wagakure.
A name spoken in whispers. A reputation carved in obsidian.
She was Japanese, yes—but not in any typical way.
Amaya was the goth queen of Toyotaro Miracle High, a walking statement of war against all things pink, polite, or patriarchal. Her jet-black hair fell in long, jagged layers down to her waist, the ends dyed a bleeding shade of violet. Thick black eyeliner framed her storm-grey eyes like razor wire. Her lipstick was the kind of matte black that could scare mirrors into cracking.
She wore a leather corset over a mesh top that exposed inked skin—sleeves of tattoos blooming down both arms in crimson and ash, tangled in thorns, crows, and shattered hearts. A spiked choker clung to her pale throat like a threat. Multiple ear piercings glittered with black studs, silver chains connecting some of them like battle scars. Her septum was pierced with a silver ring, and her tongue was rumored to have a stud too—not that anyone had ever gotten close enough to confirm.
Fishnets wrapped around her legs like spiderwebs. Heavy platform boots slammed down with every step, like she was walking through a war zone. She had the energy of someone who had buried entire personalities just for glancing at her wrong.
Her glare? Thermonuclear.
The laughter died instantly.
The Ronins froze mid-breath.
Even Shotaro blinked—just once—his smirk faltering into a neutral line.
Amaya's voice, when it came, was like cold steel dragged across velvet.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Sandwich Septons? Laundry Lords? Kitchen Knights?"
She stepped closer, boots echoing like war drums. "You want to joke about women being born to serve, huh?"
Zenkichi audibly gulped.
Hiroki shrank slightly, muttering, "Abort mission. Abort mission."
But Amaya wasn't done.
"I didn't crawl out of a gutter of shitty Manhattan fratboys and betrayal," she hissed, eyes flashing like cursed silver, "just to come to this school and listen to three emotionally constipated delinquents cosplay as comedians from the 1950s."
Shotaro opened his mouth —
"Don't." Her voice cut through the air. "I swear, Mugiwara, if you smirk right now, I will shove that tea so far down your throat you'll be pissing matcha for a week."
Even Professor Wittgenstein finally stirred, lifting his gaze from the pages of his handwritten scroll as the air shifted with palpable tension. "Miss Kurosawa—"
But Amaya didn't even spare him a glance.
"Not now, Professor," she declared, her voice slicing through the room like a ceremonial blade unsheathed. "I'm about to unleash feminism."
For a moment, the world stood still.
Silence rippled across the classroom like a dropped needle in a funeral.
The fluorescent lights flickered.
A single cherry blossom drifted past the window.
Even the gods paused their heavenly scroll-writing to observe what the hell had just been said.
And then—
The Ronins looked at each other.
Their faces twitched.
Their shoulders began to shake.
Until—
"PFFFFFT—BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
The back row exploded.
Shotaro bent over, hand covering his mouth as tears welled in his crimson eyes. "Good damn it—she sure is funny," he choked out, wiping a tear with the back of his sleeve like a man who had just heard the world's most absurd punchline delivered with nuclear sincerity.
Zenkichi nearly fell out of his chair, kicking the floor as he gasped for breath. "Y-Yeah! Maybe on a good day, I 'might' be scared of her!" he wheezed. "But right now? Bro, she's a walking Tumblr post!"
Hiroki leaned back, arms crossed, face twisted in pure disbelief. And then—he raised his voice, pitch-perfect in mocking tone:
"i Am BoUt tO rELeaSe FeMiNIsM~!"
Another detonation of laughter.
Desks shook. A cup of water fell off a nearby table. Even a passing crow outside cawed, paused mid-flight, and veered left out of sheer secondhand embarrassment.
Shotaro slapped the table. "SOMEONE STOP HER BEFORE SHE LIBERATES THE MICROWAVE!"
Zenkichi was howling. "WE'RE GONNA GET GENDER-RAYED!!"
Professor Wittgenstein sighed softly, removing his glasses to polish them with the sleeve of his robe. "And yet… this, too, is a form of dialectic."
No one heard him.
Because the Ronins were still laughing.
Still breathless.
Still wheezing.
Still wiping tears from the corners of their eyes like they'd just survived a stand-up routine performed by a cursed AI with feminist firmware.
Because the Ronins were still laughing.
Their laughter echoed long after Amaya Wagakure had stormed out—righteous boots pounding down the hallway like a war march, coat trailing like the wings of a fallen angel fueled by pure feminist vengeance. Somewhere in the distance, a locker door slammed so hard it cried.
And yet, at the back of the classroom, three delinquents sat recovering from their second wind of unholy cackling.
The room began to settle. The tension faded. But in its place came something heavier—something Shotaro felt settle in his chest like cooling iron.
He sat up straight, exhaled, and let the smirk fade from his face.
"Alright, boys," Shotaro said, brushing a hand through his silver hair and draining the last sip of his tea. "We should go and apologize to her."
Hiroki blinked, halfway through sketching Amaya's catchphrase in elaborate gothic font across his notebook. "But… Aniki," he said, confused. "Why should we apologize to her for this? She went nuclear over a joke."
Shotaro stood, his eyes gleaming—not with mischief now, but with something deeper. Something almost… solemn.
He looked at Hiroki and Zenkichi, his tone calm but firm, like a ripple in still water.
"just come with me."
The words struck the desk like a judge's gavel.
Hiroki's smirk faded.
Zenkichi slowly sat up, running a hand through his mess of hair, nodding slightly.
Shotaro adjusted the sleeves of his black uniform jacket, turned toward the door, and added, without looking back—
"Let's clean the mess we made, before she turns this whole damn school into a feminist fortress."
The hallway stretched before them like a gauntlet, fluorescent lights flickering as if the school itself held its breath.
Hiroki's question hung in the air like a guillotine.
"Why should we owe it to that girl anyway?" he spat, kicking a stray pebble across the floor. "She was a dick."
Shotaro halted.
Slowly, he turned—his silver hair catching the pale light, crimson eyes glowing like embers in the dim. The air thickened, heavy with the unspoken weight of his next words.
"Of course we don't owe her," Shotaro said, voice colder than midwinter steel. "She's a walking hurricane in platform boots. Apologize, and she'll probably carve 'patriarchy' into our foreheads with her eyeliner."
A beat. His gaze sharpened.
"But that's not why we're doing this."
He stepped closer, each footfall echoing like a verdict.
"The world's a graveyard of regrets. We bury people daily—with words we don't mean, jokes we don't think about, glances we don't catch." His voice dropped, raw and relentless. "Most of the time? We don't even see the bodies."
Another step. Shadows pooled around him like liquid ink.
"But when you do see the grave you dug? When you know you're standing on someone's ribs?" He locked eyes with Hiroki, then Zenkichi. "Choosing to walk away isn't freedom. It's cowardice."
Zenkichi stiffened. Hiroki's fists clenched.
Shotaro's final words fell like a funeral bell.
"We hurt souls in the dark every damn day. But the ones we see bleeding? That's where we prove we're more than takers."
Silence.
Hiroki looked away first. Zenkichi nodded once, jaw tight.
Without another word, the Ronins moved forward—not to beg forgiveness, not to kneel.
To face the storm they'd ignited.
To meet the eyes of the girl they'd wounded.
To choose, for once, not to look away.
"Okay, where the fuck is that femcel?" Hiroki muttered, scanning the empty courtyard like a soldier on recon.
They found her at the edge of campus, where the cherry blossoms fell like funeral confetti.
Amaya Wagakure sat on a rusted bench, her spiked boots digging into the dirt as she ranted at a lone crow perched on the fence. The bird—black as her nail polish, sharp as her tongue—cocked its head as if actually listening.
"—and then they had the audacity to laugh, Ikol!" she seethed, gesturing wildly. "Like the patriarchy itself personally hired them as stand-up comedians!"
The crow, 'Ikol', let out a guttural caw—either in agreement or because it wanted her sandwich.
From behind a nearby tree, the Ronins watched.
Hiroki snorted. "Bro, she's literally arguing with a bird."
Zenkichi rubbed his temples. "That crow's probably the only thing that gets her."
Shotaro said nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on Amaya—on the way her hands trembled slightly, how her voice cracked just once before she steeled it again.
"We step on hearts without even feeling them break," he said quietly. "But when we hear the sound? That's when we decide what kind of men we are."
Hiroki blinked. "Since when did you turn into a poet?"
Shotaro smirked. "Since never. Now shut up. We're apologizing."
And with that, the Red-Eyed Ronins stepped out of the shadows—ready to face the fury of a goth girl and her avian therapist.
"Ikol... Ikol?" Shotaro muttered, testing the name on his tongue like a curse. His crimson eyes narrowed, tracking the crow's beady gaze as it tilted its head mockingly.
A beat.
"...Loki?"
The word dropped like a guillotine blade.
In one fluid motion, Shotaro lunged—his hand snapping around the crow's throat like a steel trap. The bird's wings flapped wildly, a choked caw tearing from its beak—
—before he slammed it into the ground with enough force to crater concrete.
"ENOUGH OF THIS FUCKERY," Shotaro snarled.
The world ripped.
The bird shrieked—an unearthly, human shriek—as Shotaro's fingers clamped around its throat.
The world split open.
Feathers detonated in a shockwave of emerald fire, scorching the air and rattling the ground underfoot. The creature twisted violently, its frame contorting with the sound of snapping bones and shattering illusions—
Until—
A man lay crumpled in the dirt.
Not just any man.
Loki.
But not the Loki of Western fairytales, nor the comic book trickster painted in gaudy gold and green.
This Loki was a nightmare dressed in elegance.
His raven-black hair fell wild and loose to his lower back, tangled with strands of shimmering silver threads that pulsed faintly like veins of magic. His skin was pale, almost translucent under the moonlight, as if he had been stitched together from shadows and old, forgotten promises.
Instead of traditional Asgardian armor, Loki wore a flowing, jagged coat woven from midnight silk and iron thorns. The fabric shifted colors between deep forest green and bruised violet, like oil on water, depending on how the light kissed it. Each movement made the hems flicker and snap like the edges of a stormcloud torn by lightning.
Black leather gloves covered his hands, but strange, ancient runes glowed through the fabric as if burned into his very flesh. His tunic was layered, minimalist but dangerous—belted by a twisted rope of silver chains instead of leather, each link humming with restrained power.
And atop his head—no simple horned helmet—but a crown of broken antlers, jagged and asymmetrical, as if ripped from a beast mid-battle and crudely reforged into a mark of defiance.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he coughed, wiping it away with a grimace of both annoyance and dark amusement.
"Well," Loki rasped, voice smooth and cutting like winter air over a frozen river, "that was... unnecessarily violent."
Amaya staggered back, scream tearing from her throat. "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK—?!"
Hiroki's eyes nearly popped from his skull. "ANIKI JUST SUPLEXED A GOD—"
Zenkichi clutched at his chest, gasping like he'd been shot. "WE CAME TO APOLOGIZE, NOT COMMIT DEICIDE—"
Shotaro cracked his knuckles once, slow and deliberate, as emerald flames licked at the dirt around Loki's crumpled form.
His crimson eyes burned like molten iron.
"No more third parties," Shotaro said coldly. "We settle things face to face."
Loki coughed violently, spitting dirt, and dragged himself onto one elbow—his shimmering coat torn, his twisted crown hanging crookedly on his head.
"Odin's... left testicle's golden strand of divine keratin..." Loki rasped, voice cracking between indignation and awe. His emerald eyes burned with recognition."You... You..." He jabbed a trembling, leather-gloved finger at Shotaro. "You are Mugiwara Sho—"
[Shotaro: Journey of a hero that kept moving forward]
Before Loki could spit out the rest of the name, Hiroki burst out:
"Wait, wait, WHAT?! You two know each other?!"
The question cracked the tension like a whip.
Shotaro's eyes narrowed slightly.
A memory—one he had buried under years of chaos, war, and absurdity—rose unbidden from the depths of his mind.
A flashback.
He was no more than a funny-looking infant back then—barely a year old. Round cheeks, tiny fists, and crimson eyes far too serious for a creature so small.
A quiet countryside shrine, wind chimes jingling softly in the breeze.
And then—
A crow.
Not just any crow.
A crow with an aura so cursed it practically radiated criminal intent.
Loki.
Hovering on the shrine's torii gate, giggling in that horrible, mischief-soaked way only primordial beings could manage.
And then—
A heinous act.
A crime so vile, so treacherous, it could never be forgiven.
Loki, grinning like a drunk trickster, dropped a steaming, unholy payload directly onto baby Shotaro's forehead.
Crow shit.
A hit with sniper-level precision.
The infant Shotaro had blinked once, tiny fists clenching in rage.The wind around the shrine had shifted.Somewhere, ancient gods had paused their tea.
And baby Shotaro, without hesitation, had hurled his tiny sandal at Loki with such terrifying velocity that the crow barely escaped with its life.
The sandal cracked the torii in half.
A thousand-year-old sacred gate... destroyed by the wrath of a pissed-off baby.
Back in the present—
Shotaro's lip twitched. Just barely.
Loki shuddered visibly from his place on the ground. "The gods whispered of you even back then... The Red-Eyed Calamity..." he murmured.
Hiroki and Zenkichi stood frozen, trying—and failing spectacularly—to process the absurd timeline they had just been slapped with.
"You mean to tell me," Hiroki blurted out, voice cracking like a teenager facing Judgment Day, "that Aniki went full divine smite mode as a baby because a bird shat on his head?!"
Shotaro cracked his neck, a slow, deliberate motion that sounded like mountains grinding together. His expression remained flat as granite, his crimson eyes glinting with lethal memory.
"I'm not the type to forgive," he said coolly, "even in diapers."
Zenkichi slapped a hand over his mouth, shoulders trembling violently as he struggled not to collapse into laughter.
Meanwhile, Loki—the mighty God of Mischief, breaker of worlds, ruiner of pantheons—was reduced to pathetically crawling backward across the dirt, dragging his once-proud coat like a wounded raccoon caught in a garbage fight.
And then—
"HEY! HEY! HEY!"A furious voice cut through the scene like a jagged knife.
Amaya Wagakure stormed forward, black trench coat whipping around her like a war banner, heavy boots stomping seismic echoes into the courtyard.
"Did you forget me?!" she barked, jabbing a finger into the air. "Did you forget I'm literally right here?!"
She whirled toward Loki, eyes wide with feral confusion. "And what the actual hell is happening?! Why is the edgelord beating up a discount Sephiroth cosplay?!"
Shotaro turned to face her fully, his expression still maddeningly calm.
"Nothing important," he said bluntly."I saw you get all hurt and pissy when we laughed," he added, voice steady but without mockery.He took a step forward, hands casually tucked into his pockets.
"We're sorry for that."
A beat.
Then he turned slightly, without looking back.
"Boys."
In perfect synchronization—like soldiers who had been through too much to resist—Hiroki and Zenkichi bowed their heads low.
"Yeah, yeah," they chorused, voices echoing off the empty courtyard. "We're sorry for laughing in front of everyone."
Amaya blinked, clearly caught off guard by the unexpected—and surprisingly sincere—apology.
But, of course, Shotaro couldn't leave it at that.
Straightening, he tilted his head slightly, smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, the very picture of unapologetic sass.
"Not that I agree with whatever you were saying, tho," Shotaro said, voice dripping with his signature sarcasm.
Amaya's mouth opened—and promptly shut again, too stunned to fire back immediately.
Behind her, Loki let out a small, pitiful wheeze.
"...I'm still here too, you know..." he muttered.
No sooner had Shotaro's words left his mouth than something in Amaya snapped.
The air shifted—less like a breeze, more like the sudden pressure before a thunderstorm detonates.
"You think this is funny?!" she shrieked, voice cracking under the weight of years she'd never asked to carry. "Of course you do—you're all the same!"
Her black boots slammed into the ground as she stormed closer, eyes wild, hair whipping around her like a living shadow.
"You think laughing it off is cute?! Try growing up under a dad who thought 'discipline' meant breaking you down until you couldn't even look in a mirror without apologizing! Try getting locked out of your own goddamn house in winter because your brothers thought it would 'toughen you up'!"
Her fists were trembling now—not from fear.
From rage.
"Try begging for help and being laughed at because 'girls are supposed to be weaker!'"
She jabbed a finger at Shotaro, Hiroki, and Zenkichi in turn, her words firing like bullets:
"You're the same! You laugh, you joke, you kick at things you don't understand, because it's easier than actually giving a shit!"
Silence fell heavy again.
Even Loki, bruised and battered on the ground, quietly scooted away, deciding this battlefield wasn't worth dying on twice.
Shotaro didn't move.
Didn't smirk.
Didn't flinch.
He just stood there—solid as a mountain—as Amaya threw every shard of her broken past at his feet.
Hiroki rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, guilt flashing across his face.
Zenkichi looked at the ground, jaw tight, a muscle ticking.
Amaya's breath came in harsh, ragged gasps. Her eyeliner had smudged under her eyes, giving her a feral, hunted look—but she didn't wipe it away.
She wore her rage like armor.
And behind it, even if she didn't realize—there was heartbreak.
There was hurt.
There was a girl who had bled so many times she no longer knew where the wounds ended and the anger began.
Shotaro finally exhaled—slow, measured.
He stepped closer, just enough that she could swing at him if she wanted to.
He didn't speak yet.
He didn't interrupt.
He just... listened.
And in that silence, something cracked—not in Amaya's armor.
In the battlefield itself.
The war drums quieted.
For the first time in a long, long time—Amaya Wagakure wasn't screaming into a void.
Someone was actually standing there.
"Well, well, well," Shotaro monologued silently within the furnace of his mind.
He wasn't the type to think before speaking.
But even he knew there were moments when silence was necessary.When the weight of another's pain deserved not noise, but consideration.
And so he thought:
"The usual... Men in the family. SA. Trauma... A rain of suffering collected into rivers of fear... Rivers that only ever end in an ocean of hatred."
He inhaled sharply, a bitter iron taste rising at the back of his throat.
"Almost like me," he thought grimly.
And then it hit.
The memory.
Unbidden.Unforgiving.
Hokkaido burning.
The sky ash-black and blood-red, howling winds carrying screams louder than any siren.
Shotaro as a child—tiny, helpless, clutching his forehead in agony as he sat inside the car.
His mother's voice cutting through the chaos, the only other person in car:
"Keep moving forward, Shotaro."
And another voice, slick and venomous.
"Glory to Ba'al," Jesebel had whispered.
"BOOM!!!"
The world ruptured.
Back in the present, Shotaro's body twitched violently, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. The metallic tang filled his mouth, grounding him in pain even as reality slipped through his fingers.
His hands clamped over his skull, fingers digging into his temples as if he could physically tear the memories out.
His crimson eyes—normally burning with an aloof sarcasm—now raged red-hot, glowing so fiercely that the air itself shimmered around him like a mirage.
The mantra looped.
"Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro."
Over and over.A relentless hammer pounding against the walls of his mind.A survival instinct twisted into a self-inflicted curse.
"Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""Keep moving forward, Shotaro.""KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO."
Each repetition slammed into him harder than the last, fracturing his sense of reality, ripping at the stitches that barely held his soul together.
The dirt under his feet cracked from the pressure radiating off his body.
Cherry blossom petals caught fire mid-air, evaporating into black smoke.
Hiroki stumbled backward instinctively. Zenkichi cursed under his breath, fists raised—not to fight, but to shield himself from whatever was about to explode.
Even Loki, who had once sneered at the end of worlds, crawled a few more desperate inches away, muttering prayers to gods he had long betrayed.
And standing dead center in the eye of the coming storm was Shotaro Mugiwara.
The boy born for salvation of world.The boy forged by hurt & lose.The boy who was forced to keep giving.
Could not stop.
Would not stop.
His breathing was ragged now, each exhale a hot gust that scorched the earth beneath him.
Inside his skull, the chant roared:
"KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO.""KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO.""KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO."
Over and over, the chant hammered Shotaro's mind into splinters.
"KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO.""KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO.""KEEP MOVING FORWARD, SHOTARO."
The floodwaters of memory crashed over him—screams, fire, betrayal, survival—threatening to drown what little remained of the boy who had once laughed under clear skies.
But then—A hand.
Not physical, not real—But something nonetheless gripped him, pulled him back through the roaring black.
Shotaro's breathing hitched.
Reality snapped back into focus like a whip.
The courtyard. The broken ground. The stunned faces of his comrades.The heavy, heart-twisting presence of Amaya Wagakure standing there, breathing defiance through the wreckage of her own heart.
In the real world, Shotaro straightened, wiping the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand.
His crimson eyes cooled—still glowing faintly, like embers buried under ash.
A heartbeat passed.
"It sure gets tense when he does that thing with his eyes," Bird whispered out of the side of his mouth to Hiroki, who nodded like a man who had seen death once and barely made it out with his eyebrows intact.
Without a word, Shotaro began walking—Each step deliberate.Each breath steady.
He approached Amaya.
Close enough to see the cracks under the eyeliner.
Close enough to hear the storm raging behind her silence.
He stopped in front of her, posture loose but somehow unbreakable.
And then, quietly:
"Tell it to me."
Amaya blinked.
Confused.
"Your story," Shotaro said simply.No judgment.No pity.
Just a wide-open invitation for her to throw the worst parts of herself onto the table.
For a long moment, Amaya hesitated.
Then—something in her snapped loose.
And she unloaded.
It wasn't just a sob story.
It was a grand, sprawling, brutal saga:
Her mother—born and raised in Osaka—had fallen for a tall, loudmouthed American soldier stationed at the base. It was stupid, she said. One of those fairy tale mistakes you don't realize you're making until the story becomes a nightmare. She got pregnant too young, married too fast, and soon found herself trapped halfway across the world with a man who drank his regrets into fists.
The first memory Amaya had of her father was the sound of a beer bottle smashing against the wall—And the second memory was her mother apologizing for breathing too loudly.
She learned early that silence kept you alive.
Then came her brothers.
Older by three years. Identical in face, identical in cruelty.
When they smiled at her, it wasn't kindness. It was the bare teeth of predators playing with something weaker.
When she was eight, they locked her in the basement for twelve hours "to teach her toughness."When she was ten, they held her underwater at the lake "just to see if she'd scream."
And later...when the bruises stopped being physical and started becoming something worse—something rotten and private—she stopped counting the betrayals.
Her mother eventually woke up, but too late.Filed for divorce. Packed them both into a battered Toyota Corolla.Drove cross-country back to Japan with nothing but two suitcases and a mountain of silence.
They moved into her grandmother's falling-apart house in the countryside, where Amaya learned new lessons: how to sew the cracks in her soul shut with barbed wire, how to wear black not as a fashion statement but as a declaration of war.
"Men don't protect," she said, voice trembling but fierce. "They devour."
She spoke of years spent watching other girls fall for the same lies—pretty promises, easy smiles.She spoke of how every time a boy laughed too loud, or a man looked at her too long, it wasn't curiosity she saw—It was hunger.
"You either become prey," she said, voice flat and hollow, "or you become a monster too ugly for them to want."
She chose the second.
The spikes.The tattoos.The steel-cold glare.
All of it was armor—armor stitched together from the remains of a little girl who once believed in family, who once believed the world might offer her kindness.
That girl was dead now.
And standing in her place was Amaya Wagakure—the sharpest blade she could forge from her own broken bones.
By the time she finished, the air between them was heavy enough to crush lungs.
The courtyard seemed suspended in time.
The wind held its breath.
Not even Loki dared move.
Shotaro stood there.
Taking it.
Every poisoned word.
Every flicker of pain she buried under rage.
Every piece of the story she tried to hide behind sarcasm and violence.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't smirk.
He didn't turn away.
He just absorbed it—Like someone who knew exactly what it felt like to be made, not born, in the fires of betrayal.
And then—
He spoke.
His voice was low. Not gentle. Not cruel.Just... real.
"This world is just one big bowl of marbles," Shotaro said, staring past her, as if seeing the cracks in reality itself. "All cracked. Some shattered. Some still pretending they're whole."
The words rolled out slowly, unpolished, carved from something deeper than thought.
"You grow up thinking people are supposed to fit together. Families. Friends. Lovers. Like some grand cosmic puzzle."
He exhaled sharply through his nose.
"But all you find are pieces that cut you when you try to hold on."
Shotaro's crimson eyes flickered back to Amaya's, unblinking.
"The ones who are supposed to protect you are the first ones who carve their names into your scars.The ones who swear they'll stay are the first to vanish when you bleed."
He took a step closer.
Not threatening.
Not soft.
Just there.
"You don't trust," Shotaro said, voice rough-edged but steady, "because you learned the hard way that trust is a loaded gun.You don't love because you watched love rot in the mouths of liars."
The courtyard held its breath.
Even the dying sunset seemed to listen, bleeding gold and red across the sky like a wound refusing to close.
Shotaro's lip curled slightly—not in mockery, but in something harsher. Something almost like understanding carved from glass.
"We live in a world where thorns soothe, and flowers cut," he said.Each word dropped into the silence like stones into deep water.
"In a way," he continued, voice low, "I can understand your hatred. Your distrust of the Y chromosome."He chuckled bitterly, a sound that held no humor."And yeah... it's fine. You're allowed. Go ahead. Be angry. Lash out. Rage at it all."His crimson gaze pinned her to the earth."That is not unbecoming.It's not weakness.It's not failure."
"It's human."
A breath. Heavy. Weighted.
But then—
"But," Shotaro said, voice sharpening into something iron-clad.
He stepped even closer now, close enough that Amaya could see the faint hairline cracks in his armor too.
"If you let that rage be the only thing left in you..."His voice was soft. Terrifyingly soft.Like the final warning before the storm drowns the world.
"If you let them poison your heart until all you are is a monument to what they did...""Then they still own you."
Silence slammed down like a falling guillotine.
The words weren't pity.
They weren't accusations.
They were just truth.Ugly. Bloody. Unavoidable.
Shotaro's crimson eyes bored into hers—Not challenging.Not dismissing.
Just...holding her steady.
"Surviving's not just about standing back up," he said."It's about making damn sure they don't get to keep the pieces they tried to break."
He straightened, the dying sunlight igniting the silver in his hair, the scars across his heart bleeding invisible under his skin.
"You owe them nothing, Wagakure.Not your hate.Not your fear.Not even your story."
His voice dropped into a low, molten whisper.
"You can only keep moving forward."
The very words his mother had once burned into his blood, now hurled forward like a torch into someone else's broken night.
Amaya bristled, the weight of everything in her gut twisting hard against her instinct to fight, to snap, to survive.
Her voice cracked sharp through the tension.
"What are you implying, Mugiwara?"
But before she could move—before she could even blink—Shotaro's hand shot out.
Not rough.Not violent.
Firm.Steady.
Fingers clamped around her shoulder with a grip that carried no demand, only undeniable intention.
And then—Reality fractured around them.
A thundercrack of air pressure punched through the courtyard as Shotaro activated his Spatial Step—the world folding in on itself like crumpled paper—and they were gone.
Just like that.
Amaya and Shotaro disappeared into a rift of silver light, leaving nothing behind but scorched air and the faint echo of movement that the human mind couldn't process.
The remaining courtyard crew blinked.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Loki—now regressed into his massive crow form, Ikol—flapped his wings lazily, still recovering from the earlier suplex as if nothing interesting had just happened.
Hiroki stared at the empty space where Shotaro and Amaya had been standing.
"...Did he just—?" he stammered.
"Yup," Bird answered, deadpan, plopping down cross-legged on the broken ground like this was just another Tuesday at Toyotaro Miracle High.
Hiroki scratched the back of his head, still staring at the empty space where Shotaro and Amaya had vanished. "Aniki just... kidnapped a feminist goth girl using teleportation magic."
"Romantic," Bird muttered, voice laced with pure sarcasm. "Really screams 'healthy relationship dynamics.'"
Meanwhile, in the middle of the chaos, Ikol—a.k.a. Loki the God of Mischief himself, back in in an oversized crow body—shuffled his glossy black feathers with an air of supreme disdain, clicking his beak pointedly.
Hiroki narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"You hungry, God?"
Ikol let out a low, judgmental caw that somehow radiated more offense than an entire army of insulted aristocrats.
Zenkichi (Bird) smirked, reaching into his pocket with the theatrical flair of a man about to offer tribute to a fallen deity. He pulled out a half-eaten piece of melon bread—squashed, slightly linty—and held it aloft like an offering to the heavens.
"Hear me, oh mighty feathered one!" Bird proclaimed dramatically, the wind ruffling his jacket as if nature itself mocked him. "Accept this humble gift, and bestow upon us your unholy blessings!"
Ikol—the so-called God of Mischief trapped in crow form—puffed up indignantly, feathers standing on end.
"Kaw! Kaw!!" he cawed, voice dripping with outrage. "I am a god, you two dimwits!!"
"We know that," Bird replied casually, as if addressing an especially annoying neighborhood cat. "We also know you got pregnant by a horse."
Ikol froze mid-flap.
An uncomfortable gust of wind rolled across the courtyard.
"We don't talk about that," Ikol muttered darkly, voice dipping into the lower registers of shame.
Hiroki smirked wickedly. "Come on, you enjoyed that, didn't you, you freaky-ass bird?"
There was a long, soul-crushing pause.
Ikol shifted his wings uncomfortably.
"...Maybe a little?..." he admitted in a voice so small it could have been mistaken for a dying breeze.
The courtyard went completely silent.
"... .... ...."
"... ... ..."
"... ..."
Bird and Hiroki just stared at him, eyes wide, mouths slightly open, minds clearly trying and failing to recover from the emotional whiplash of hearing Loki—ancient trickster god, master of chaos—confess to having enjoyed an interspecies cosmic scandal.
Ikol shuffled his claws awkwardly. "Why are you two so silent right now?"
The heavy, catastrophic silence stretched even further.
Then Hiroki opened his mouth, a scrorn spreading across his face. "Bitch-ass n—"
Before he could finish whatever horrific slur against nature, dignity, or cosmic decency was about to leave his lips—
Ikol interrupted sharply, wings snapping out wide.
"ENOUGH!!" he screeched."About Mugiwara!"
The courtyard crackled with a different kind of tension now.
The name alone pulled the laughter right out of the air.
Ikol's eyes—those black, bottomless beads—turned razor-sharp, all traces of mocking gone.
Whatever was about to be said...was no longer a joke.
And it was about Shotaro.