Asura

“Move!” The first sound that came after the whole ordeal was unexpectedly from the perpetrator herself. Or, to be precise, the half that did not cause the incident, as Kana, with her still conscious left side, forcefully grabbed her right and ripped it off the hole on the now demonic being’s chest.

The beast, agitated by the sudden pain, let out a deafening roar — enough to rock the building to even its ceiling above, sending bits of debris already ready to all crumble down. Meanwhile, the girl responsible, still bearing her half-crazed face, hurriedly dashed back and grabbed the fallen man on the floor, ready to escape.

However, at that moment, our eyes crossed.

I could see it hidden behind her half-broken mask. Her single golden eye, still flaring with indomitable will in contrast to the crazed, insane brown eye on her other side.

She — Kana — was still ready to fight. But whether that would be a good thing for me or not was much unknown.

But she wasn’t the only one. For the remnants of the Chief, the hulking demon in front of us had also started to move.

Just a single step it took, and I could already feel all the air being snuffed out of my lungs. It wasn’t a mental effect, but the most literal sense — its body was emitting heat strong enough to warp the air around it, vaporizing everything around it. The floor became brittle enough that each step crumbled it into dust. This monster was no doubt a walking disaster unlike anything I’d seen before.

Yet, that wasn’t even the fullest extent of what it could do.

“Kid, dodge!”

Duna’s panicked shout shocked me back to reality, as the monster gathered its biggest breath yet, puffing its chest to twice, maybe even thrice its initial size. And once the monster released all of it out, what erupted wasn’t simple air, but a sea of smoldering flame, wide enough to cover the entire room.

There was no dodging this attack. Or at least, under normal circumstances.

“Tch!” Kana clicked her tongue in anger. Crushing the rocky floor under her foot, the girl made a beeline dash behind me, still carrying Duna under her arm like a rag. Without another word, she delivered a swift stomach kick towards me, and during the second that my body bent forward in pain, she grabbed and stacked me right over the old man in her arm, before blasting all of us outside with another lightning step.

Before I could realize it, we were already outside the building, the sensation of rain quickly cooled both our rashed skin and weary minds. But it wasn’t near the end of my suffering just yet.

“Hey,” Kana, after putting both me and Duna down, grabbed me again by the collar. “What the hell are you doing? Transform already!”

“I can’t,” I shook my head. “Got no desire left.”

Immediately, I saw stars. The girl had headbutted me with all her might, so strong that the cracks on her mask grew ever so longer, almost reaching the chin.

“What do you mean ‘no desire left’? What are you, a potted plant? Look at our current predicament! Don’t you wanna live, you oversized lizard?”

No wonder she was the strongest out of all Stigma wielders. Even with only half of her mind intact, I could tell that she was, without a doubt, the one that ran on emotions the most out of anyone else I had met.

Which made her the definitive most annoying to deal with.

“What if I told you that I didn’t want to live? What would you do then?”

My face burned for a second time, while my mouth tasted iron.

“Fuck off! Then die for me, and we can all call this a wrap!”

Before her arm could summon her familiar sword, however, I had moved a step forward and grabbed her back. On her right side.

“Hey, Sis. Deal with this chick for me, ‘kay?”

This time, the remaining half of my face burned with pain, and for a second time, iron flowed in my mouth. Now with the extra bonus of a few rustling bits of broken teeth.

However, after hitting me, the right arm also slapped Kana on the face, enough to turn her head almost 90 degrees to the side.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I let out a chuckle. I could use this situation, that was for sure.

Turning to Duna, I asked. “What exactly happened to her anyway?”

“I’m… not sure,” the man only shook his head. “I know that Indra… or rather, your sister’s influence on her was already near its peak when she defected to Drizzle, and I know that it would only get stronger the more she used that power. But to overuse it to the point that ‘Indra’ awakened to her original personality, as well as tried to take over the body like this is unprecedented.”

Great, another useless bit of information.

“Well, now what? Asking her for help is, frankly, ill-advised,” I said. “How are you doing against that thing?”

“You’re… awfully okay with killing your old mentor.”

“Did I ever tell you that he was my mentor?”

“No, but you called him ‘Chief’ after all,” Duna shrugged. “It wasn’t a hard guess.”

“Well… I might say things, but I still wanna live, obviously,” I answered.

It was a lie. But it wasn’t because of my emotions not being present as well. This, unlike before, was a conscious decision that I made. If I was being heartless because I had no other choice before, then now, I was being heartless… because I chose to be so.

But I still couldn’t figure out the exact reason. I knew that there was still something within me that hadn’t been explored yet. Something that I was still missing, in order to be my own person again.

Another roar shredded through the air. From the old building, a loud boom ensued, bringing down the entire house in one fell swoop. From the debris, the demon emerged, this time with all of its remaining hands holding a different kind of weapon: the left had a spiked club resting on its shoulder, a sword in the middle, and an axe in the lower. On its right was a large cutlass, a single gauntlet, and a curved chakram at the bottom.

However, I felt no fear. Instead, looking at the monster that was once my mentor, my parental figure…

“My heart is beating faster. Perhaps… it was right there all along.”

It wasn’t excitement upon seeing a strong foe. It wasn’t anger before a monster-fied family member. It wasn’t sadness before the fact that they would never return to me.

Instead, it was something even more primal. Something that existed within all of us as human beings, that drove us to our actions.

I clutched my left chest, feeling every accelerating beat from my heart. I knew that this time, if I held this feeling, everything would work out.

And the ones before me. The monster that was the Chief. The unrelenting vengeful spirit that was my sister. If it was against those two, I could have my answer.

I took a step forward, raising my arm to reveal my tattoo. I hadn’t checked it in a while, but with the moonlight finally shining down, I could see that the serpent had gained much more color from before.

It was nearly all black already.

I let out a smile. I knew that this feeling was growing big enough to be a desire. Humanity’s most distinctive, most natural sense of self — curiosity.

“Unleashed.”