His scream erupted as an inarticulate gargle as he fell to the ground, clawing at his chest. Red-hot flames poured from his mouth and ears and nostrils, like he’d turned into a fire-breathing dragon. His body appeared completely unscathed from the outside. Kaki’s accursed fires consumed only the internal organs.
“Stop it!” Sayaka cried out.
Kyoya broke through the cordon of onlookers and sprang forward. He had in his right hand the newspaper he’d “borrowed” from the back pocket of the man he’d been talking to. As he ran, he rolled it into a kind of sword.
“Son of a bitch! Eat shit and die!” he yelled, adopting an uncharacteristically uncouth manner in hopes of hiding his true identity. If Kaki underestimated him, he could fend off the first attack and then deliver the fatal blow before Kaki could recover.
There was only one problem with the plan.
“Kaki! That’s him!” A voice thick with hatred hurled at him as the ground beneath his feet turned to water.
At the last second, as the sound waves reached him, he’d taken a flying leap. Kaki’s fire reached out with a roar. While in the air, the paper sword flashed, intercepting the ball of fire and shattering it into a thousand pieces. Just as he landed, he pushed his nen into the “sword” and struck the ground with it.
He did this in order to check Suiki’s magic. As he landed, he brought the “sword” to the vertical and intercepted a second volley from Kaki, and then ran to Sayaka.
His feet came to a sudden halt. “Damn!” he cursed to himself, as Sayaka sank into the pavement down to her ankles.
“Don’t come any closer!” she cried out.
“No, come on.” Suiki’s victorious voice flowed across the plaza. “I will drag you both down to a Davy Jones’s Locker. In the pit of my stomach.”
Kaki added, “Throw away that toy. Or the girl dies first. Want to watch her struggling in a watery grave?”
Kyoya froze. He couldn’t move. He’d happily take on two demons by himself. But with Sayaka in the mix, there was little he could do. She was ten feet away. The time it’d take him to cross those ten feet was plenty of time for Suiki to demonstrate his powers. He was facing the worst of all possible stand-offs.
“Kyoya-san, run!” Sayaka shouted. “You are our only hope. Think of the people of the world, not me!”
“How self-sacrificing,” Kaki sneered. “What will you do, boy? You are our target now. If you promise not to resist, I will persuade Suiki to let the girl live.”
No matter how fierce the battle, Kyoya’s mood remained all the more laid-back at the height of it. But now a flinch of concern showed for the first time. He could hardly count on Kaki telling the truth, all the more reason why he couldn’t abandon Sayaka even as she wept and pleaded for him to cast her aside and save others.
He slowly lowered the paper sword.
Sayaka abruptly groaned and threw back her head. She was about to bite down on her tongue when an unexpected force stopped her.
“Hey!”
Kyoya and the two demons shouted practically in unison. Sayaka vaulted from the ground and shot through the air with tremendous speed, then gently landed feet-first next to Kyoya.
Putting out a hand to steady her, he cast his eyes around the plaza. In one corner, their hands linked together, stood seven men. The remaining espers, enemy and ally alike, combining their psychic energies to save Sayaka.
“Get going!” shouted one. “Whatever else happens, be sure to save her!”
“Thank you! But why—?”
Another answered the unfinished question. “You’re the only one who ever went out of her way for a bunch of bastards like us. We won’t forget it!”
“We’ve brought those demons to a standstill with our psychokinesis. Escape while you can!”
Kyoya called back, “But they’re not exactly the types to forgive and forget!”
His psychic powers and those of the espers were essentially the same. What distinguished the two was the kind of training and the refinement of the particular skill. No matter how powerful the esper’s nen, it didn’t extend much beyond moving and manipulating physical objects.
With a degree of self-control mastered through yoga and zazen, Kyoya could push his nen beyond the restraints of physical law and strike at demons from other worlds. His was a superpower that arose out of what might best be called a “spiritual dimension,” fundamentally different from that of the espers, more akin to the exorcising power of a priest amplified several thousand times.
In short, the psychic powers of the espers could never eradicate the presence of the Demon Realm. They had been able to extract Sayaka from Suiki’s grip only because there was one among them who, although his powers were tiny in comparison, had undergone the same kind of training as Kyoya.
“We know,” answered another esper. “But we have enough strength to hold them back while you escape. The girl said it was for the good of the world. It may not count for much but let us do what we can for such a cause.”
“Goodbye, princess. If I had a girl like you in my life, I’m sure I would have made something of myself more than what I am today. Get going!”
“Go on. Take off!”
Sayaka’s eyes filled with tears. Kyoya vowed to himself. There wasn’t the time to find out who they were. But he would never forget their faces. With a quick bow to the espers, he grabbed Sayaka’s hand and bounded away.
“Don’t let them escape!”
“You meddlesome worms!”
The demonic curses swirled after them. Constrained by the psychic powers of the espers, Kyoya didn’t sense the demons themselves in hot pursuit.