"This reminds me of a theory I have that whenever there is a monster at attack, it gets suddenly cloudy because a water controller is gathering the clouds to use the summoning sigil, the sign you saw in the sky, to teleport the people to safety and bring them back."
"But Sam," Omari sat outside on the rooftop during his lunch at school, with his phone in one hand and a tuna nicoie sandwich in the other, "wouldn't the people then notice they were teleported?"
"True, but only if there wasn't a time controller altering their perspective of time when they're teleported away, then the entire event becomes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. And you've seen the power of a time controller first hand so you know it's not outside the realm of possibility."
"Sure, but how can a person have so much power?"
"The answer is their crucifix, Mari. Those crosses they carry are the source of their power and the neat thing is even a Normie like me can become superhuman with a crucifix in hand, no control needed. Isn't that amazing?" The glee in his voice leaked through the phone.
Omari chuckled, "What's amazing is how much you know about slayers."
"I need to. To become a slayer, you have to go to slayer school, so I'm just studying before I get enrolled next year. Just 3 months left."
Omari, thinking back to what his father said, then asked, "By the way, Sam, in all our years of being friends, you never told me why you want to be a slayer in the first place."
Samson sighed. "I'll tell you next time we see each other." Before Omari could object, the call ended. He stared at his screen a moment, debating calling back—but the bell rang, and with it came the usual tide of school life.
The rest of Omari's day passed as usual. After school, he walked home just as the sky turned orange, clouds lazily drifting overhead like tired thoughts. Supper with his dad was waiting, as always. They talked more at supper than they did at breakfast but as the news played on the tv in the background, Omari found his attention shifting.
Today's monster attack was being broadcasted and there Omari saw him again, the slayer. He was called Lightning and his battle with the monster was being shown off, the monster in its many tentacle horror, the buildings being sliced in half and ultimately the thunderclap that ended it all. Even now, it all looks too grand to be true but Omari had seen it with his own eyes. Funny enough he was edited out of the footage so it could not all be true.
But even so it was easy to believe there was no attack considering how there was nothing to show for it. Nothing besides the few people who were at ground zero of the monster attack before slayer intervention and the many more bodies of the people who did not survive ground zero. But of the hundreds that died, hundreds of thousands were saved and Omari wondered if he could ever reach that height and if it would make him happy.
Later, while studying, he'd catch himself tracing the symbols of sigils into the margins of his notebook, or watching videos of famous slayers pulling off impossible feats. When the house finally quieted, Omari curled into bed and fell asleep. Each night, he had begun having the same dreams of himself with white hair like snow standing where nothing else stood.
Sometimes the world burned around him. Sometimes it froze. But always, the white-haired version of himself was there, watching him silently, as if waiting for Omari to understand something he hadn't yet put into words. These dreams lingered through the night and faded slowly in the morning as he woke up.
A whole month passed this way with the same routine each day and every day he would call Samson regularly, ask him the same question, and get the same response: "Next time we see each other." The problem was Omari's interest in slayers was growing everyday and as everyday passed he wanted to know why Samson, specifically wanted to be one. Samson was always the one who decided when that "next time" would be though.
Omari couldn't just find him. He skipped class too often, preferring to study slayers more than science, and rarely went home, since he lived with an aunt he claimed to despise. But then, one morning—on the way to school, just as Omari was once again wondering what would make him truly content in life—he saw Samson waiting at the gate.
Samson was light-skinned, short and muscular. He had a right brown eye and short, brown, nappy hair that didn't grow on the left side of his face because of a burn he had over the entire right side of his face. The burn bleached his left right eye blue and stretched his face, giving him a permanent smirk.
With a duffel bag hung from his shoulder, he told Omari, "Let's go." They made their way to a nearby park, but when they sat down, Samson noticed Omari's glaring at him. "What?"
"You can't appear out of nowhere after a month, pull me out of school and still not answer the question I asked you."
Samson sighed hard this time. "I don't want to keep being weak. That's why I want to be a slayer and not just any slayer, but the strongest no matter what it takes. So there's your answer."
Omari did not know what to say but something inside him knew that if Samson was catching power for its own sake that he might one day lose himself to that dream and that idea scared Omari.
"Now for the reason I brought you here." Samson dropped the duffle bag between him and Omari.
"And what's that?" He asked trying to shrug away his thoughts. Samson, with the biggest grin on his face, unzipped the bag revealing two short, white crucifixes seemingly made of shards.
"Darker, the crucifix is the stronger they are, so these are basically powerless, but it's still the only thing able to give a monster permanent wound, so it's a step forward.."
Omari was at a loss for words, but managed to ask, "How?"
Samson smiled, "For the longest time I've been cloud-chasing and once in a while I would find shards. It did take me long to figure out these were shards from broken crucifixes. So I started welding them together, and I made these for me and you."
"You and who?" Omari didn't know any Asian named Yu.
Samson just laughed, "You dummy, and before you ask why, remember the first time we met and I was getting the living shit -"
"Language."
"Sorry, living crap out of me and you cut the tops of their hair off and threatened to cut off their fingers if they continued?"
Omari giggled. "I was lying out of my ass."
"Language, but that's the point. You're a good guy. I want power and I'm going to get it, but I know you desire it too. So take this and carry it with you. I won't let you say no." So Omari took it and put it in his backpack before realizing he still had school and ran as fast as he could, but he couldn't outrun detention.
To make it worse, since the teachers didn't know him well, they didn't go easy on him, so he was going to attend detention for the rest of the school year, lucky it was only a month left. During detention, the students would have their phones taken and they would sit in a classroom where they would be supervised by a teacher who would be the only staff member around til five o'clock when they got to go home.
During one detention, the teacher had to go, so left and locked the delinquents and Omari. To no one's surprise, as soon as the teacher left, everyone started using their phones besides Omari who had actually handed his in. Omari simply sat and played with his butterfly knife till he felt chills go down his spine. He tried to ignore it but the feeling kept persisting. 'Boom!' He jumped out of his seat and looked at the source of the sound.
The delinquents had cracked open the door. There was no way they were going to leave the school building as the security would stop them, so they began roaming around. Omari was sure this was going to be bad, but he didn't want to be found in the class alone when the teacher returned, so he grabbed his backpack and headed for the rooftop.
Most days he'd spend lunch on the rooftop. It was one of the few places he could be alone. Sometimes he watched clouds, sometimes he practiced his control in secret, carving invisible cuts into the sky just to see how far they'd go but at the moment as he got closer though, the chills down his spine only got stronger til reached a dark hallway on the last floor and suddenly the chills went away.
The hallway was silent and filled with the scent of ash. Omari could hear footsteps approaching from down the hall and from the darkness, a dim orange glow flickered like embers. Glowing jagged cracks of molten light traced a humanoid figure emerging from the dark. Its obsidian-black skin pulsed faintly with fiery veins, each breath crackling like smoldering wood.
Molten amber eyes pierced through the rippling heat, unblinking, leaving faint trails as they moved. Smoke curled lazily from its narrow, reptilian mouth, and its claws clicked against the floor, leaving scorch marks in their wake. The air wavered around it, suffocatingly hot, distorting the space like a mirage. It stopped at the edge of the shadows, eyes locked forward—silent, still, yet alive with fire.