Genre teaming up with Hitomi’s team was not a development I’d seen coming. This wasn’t the three-way split that I’d taken it for—the conflict wasn’t even in that dimension. This was a coup. The Twelve Wings of Fallen Black whom Kiryuu had assembled (of which there weren’t actually twelve, but never mind that detail) had all, without exception, betrayed him. A single woman who shouldn’t have been anything more than one of his many wings—the woman who’d devoted herself to him with a sort of dedication that no one else had ever displayed—had stolen his entire organization from under him. As things stood, the fallen angel’s wings were now all in her possession.
“I must praise Saitou Hitomi’s willingness to use every resource available to her,” Genre continued. “After all, I once intended to take her life in order to announce my intention to oppose Fallen Black.”
“You... Huh?”
“Moreover, I killed Tanaka Umeko while pursuing that objective.”
“Huuuh?!”
“I truly admire her willingness to join forces with me in spite of those circumstances.”
I whipped my gaze over to Saitou.
“That’s not how it happened,” Saitou said with a slight shake of her head. “Genre didn’t kill Umeko. Umeko died to protect me,” she quietly but emphatically asserted. She said it in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument. “I’m not going to claim that I’m not at all conflicted about working with her...but I’ve decided that right now, I need to prioritize getting as much backup on my side as I possibly can over my own little hang-ups. That’s what it’ll take if I want to beat Hajime.”
With that, Saitou turned to look once more at the pile of rubble. Her allies all had their gazes fixed on the bridge’s fallen remains as well.
By all reasonable standards, there wasn’t a chance in hell that Kiryuu was alive. As terrifying of a power as Lucifer’s Strike was, it did nothing to make Kiryuu himself indestructible. He was a perfectly ordinary, flesh-and-blood human being, and like most humans, having several tons of rubble on his head would kill him before he had time to realize what had even happened. Plus, he couldn’t use his control over gravity to reduce the rubble’s weight with his MP depleted. Saitou’s team had won...or rather, it was exactly the sort of situation that would make them think they’d won. In truth, however, not even one of them had let their guard drop.
The seconds ticked by. At long last, the cloud of dust that had been raised by the collapse began to disperse.
“You know, this is the one power that I never wanted to use.”
There he was. He stood atop the wreckage, his jet-black coat trailing behind him in the breeze, completely unharmed. Steel and concrete had fallen upon him like rain, but he hadn’t been so much as scratched.
Kiryuu lightly jumped from the pile of rubble...and vanished into thin air.
“It’s too powerful, see. Can’t exactly control it.”
The next thing I knew, Kiryuu appeared in a completely different place, several meters away from where he’d been before—only to vanish once more before I even understood what I was seeing. Once again, he appeared elsewhere, then disappeared just as quickly. It was as if someone were flicking a light switch that controlled his existence on and off, and after every disappearance, he shifted position before reemerging again. It felt like I was watching a stop-motion video with an incredibly low framerate.
This shouldn’t be possible. What am I even seeing? What sort of power is this...?
...is probably what most people would have thought under those circumstances, but honestly, I figured out the broad strokes of it pretty much right away.
“Bwa ha ha!” Kiryuu cackled. “I’ve gotta hand it to you. I never thought anyone would make me use this power... This is the true, innate nature of the power I was born with—the power of beginnings, and a power so fiendishly brutal, I had no choice but to seal it away. And that power’s name—”
“Okay, guys, Ryuu just used Lucifer’s Execution! It’s that time-severing thingamajig—you’ve all read my report and we did plenty of prep work, so you know the drill! Just keep calm and stick to the plan!”
The other members of Hitomi’s team nodded in response to Aki’s shout.
“That... That power’s name is...” Kiryuu mumbled. He’d just had the perfect opportunity to reveal his hidden trump card taken away from him, and he looked downright devastated. The look on his face was so pitiful, even I felt a little bad for the guy.
Okay, see, this is the thing. This is exactly why Aki’s power should never, ever exist in a supernatural battle story.
A power like hers made battles instantly boring. There’s nothing fun about fighting an opponent whose secret moves and hidden powers get spoiled before they’re even used. I’ll admit that I’d always been the sort of person who thought that plot twists that go “The truth is, I haven’t even been taking this fight seriously” and “Actually, I still have one trick up my sleeve” and “This move’s odds of success are too low, so I’d normally never use it, but” and “This is the one power I never wanted to use” and so on were solid signs that an author was gearing up to compete in the Asspull Olympics...but you know what? Asspulls are good, actually! A turn-based contest of competing asspulls is exactly what a supernatural battle should look like. That’s exactly why Tamaki’s and Umeko’s powers worked the way they did.
But anyway, that’s more than enough of my reader’s perspective. Back to the scene at hand.
Lucifer’s Execution: the power to sever time itself. The phrase “sever time” on its own was a pretty clear giveaway that it had something to do with time manipulation, and if he could mess with the flow of time, then his having emerged from a rain of rubble unscathed and flying around in stop motion both made total sense.
Time manipulation powers were, statistically speaking, more likely than not to end up in a final boss’s arsenal. Only characters important enough to influence a story from start to finish were allowed to set foot in the temporal realm. I didn’t know exactly how Kiryuu’s power functioned, but there was still no question at all that it was a mighty power indeed.
“Bwa ha ha...” Kiryuu laughed once more, though this time, it sounded a little forced. It seemed he’d more or less recovered his emotional footing. “Fine, then. If that’s how you want it to be...then I’ll carve my power’s name into your very souls, and brand you with the sigil of the conquered while I’m at it!”
With that enraged shout, Kiryuu made his move—or, rather, he prepared to make his move. He thrust his hand into the air, looking like he was about to recite some sort of incantation, eyes glimmering with a fiery passion all the while. Kiryuu Hajime was obviously about to use his final, most secret of special techniques: Lucifer’s Execution, the power to sever time itself.
In the end, however...I never actually found out what specifically that power was supposed to do. After all—he never got the chance to use it.
“I had faith, progenitor.”
The voice rang out seemingly from nowhere at all, but I knew its distinctive tone in an instant. I also recognized the strange way in which she referred to people by appellations rather than their names.