The Biggest Balls of Mankind

“You lost,” Ishigami pronounced. “It’s over. Give up. Run. I don’t care which.”

Rewind. Because this… Hoshino stared at the man—the myth, the legend—from the rooftop. Those words came from a man who had been held back for God knows how long. Hoshino didn’t even get to count. Those words came from a man reduced to basically fighting shirtless, standing on bare feet, with his left arm hanging only by skin, like it had been chewed by piranhas. This shouldn’t even be menacing. But somehow…

Hazama told Hoshino to tell Ishigami to get his shit together. Before Hoshino could ask for more context, she dropped the call with her usual adorable buh-bye.

There was room for thought. Should he tone down Hazama’s language? It would be funny, though. Definitely. He had a lot of back-and-forth that he dared not describe now, but in the end, his intrusive thoughts won and he trumpeted the magic words.

Ishigami and Satoru were in the thick of it when Hoshino pulled this spectacular move. The chaos involved Satoru drowning Ishigami with bolts as the man dashed, slid, somersaulted, and did a whole lot more—with the might of Hercules and the grace of a ballerina. Ishigami just stopped right in the middle of all that. He dropped the bucket. And Satoru, thinking that something was off… the man jumped back with a number of bolts on his back, all begging to be fired.

There. End of rewind.

“Bullshit,” Satoru screamed back. “Hazama’s not here.”

“Hazama—”

“You really think she could pull that shit again?” Satoru forced out a laugh. The bolts on his back grew brighter. “What? Snipe us again from half the city away? Like she’ll get more than a lucky hit? Now? Against us? Against me—”

“One hundred meters,” Ishigami interrupted, keeping his gaze steady. There was a small smile on his face, which forced Satoru to look around. Ishigami glanced at Hoshino, then back at Satoru as well. “Stop, Satoru-san. You’ll die.”

“You think your fellow toothless dogs upstairs would just let you?”

Ishigami tilted his head and took a step forward. Satoru took one step back, aiming to keep the distance between them the same. The bolts on his back flickered. They didn’t seem so eager anymore. Not yet, at least.

“You’ve already been demoted twice—”

“Hazama will cover for me.”

Satoru snorted. His face cracked into a smile. He nodded to himself, letting the silence drag. But as soon as a puff of breath escaped his lips, a chuckle followed. Then a laugh. Ishigami wasn’t kidding.

“She can’t. She won’t,” Satoru replied. “Why do you even think she’s in this shithole of a town, anyway?” He wiped the sweat from his forehead, keeping his smile intact. “And some birds told me the bitch threatened a child months after getting transferred here. After all that, you think anyone would treat that failure seriously?”

Hoshino’s eyes widened, his glare dead set on the fucker three floors down. Failure? FAILURE? Hoshino wanted to laugh. He wanted to call Satoru a shitty bolt spammer, but he could guess that Satoru would spam his ass with bolts till he died if he pulled that shit. But if Hazama was a failure… then what would he be?

Hoshino turned to the mangled Butterfly groaning on the other side of the rooftop. Lemon man. He said the name internally with utmost disgust. He had already taken his wand away. His lemon bags too. Was this man their trump card? This man who had to squeeze a lemon to make someone’s knees weak? Hoshino grinned. Mischievously. Maybe he should toss that lemon squeezer off the rooftop. That would show him—

“I would.”

“You have no power here…”

“Oh, but I do.” Ishigami cracked his knuckles.

Ishigami widened his smile. “On what grounds?”

“You threatened my people.”

Ishigami healed himself. And with his eyes locked onto Satoru’s quivering, confused glare, he pulled up his wand from his Truffula hair. Mana… Ishigami’s mana surged, shaking the earth as though everything was beneath him, as though everyone was staring at the largest pair of balls known to mankind. The atmosphere tightened like it forgot how to breathe. Weight settled into space. The air… the building… everything seemed like it was swallowed by the ocean.

And no one. No one dared to fucking laugh.

“Please leave, Satoru-san.” Ishigami gripped his wand like a sword. “Or else every one of you will die here.”

Hoshino had the opportunity to count every suspenseful moment that passed.

Satoru clicked his tongue and stepped back. And muttering a few words too soft for Hoshino to hear, he faced the building and waved his wand. His mana surged as well, and the output was dragged back into his weapon a moment later. It glowed—its usual bluish light dissolving into deep purple—as the shape of the wand expanded, extending into a staff with countless little bells attached to its head. His weapon turned into a flagellant of sorts that sang the static sound of rain instead of its usual jingle.

Hoshino’s eyes shifted from Ishigami to Satoru. This fucker. Ishigami let them go, and now he had the audacity to pull some shit like this. Some kind of magic. Some kind of ability. Were they actually going to fight? Hoshino would be very much like them to do so. If that happened, he could just skedaddle by jumping off the rooftop. Without him in the equation, it seemed that Ishigami would really beat the shit out of them. Otherwise… Why was Satoru behaving like that?

Thoughts ran through Hoshino’s head, most of which were not good for his mental health. Though before he could continue thinking about things that would bring his confidence down to the level of an unemployed 40-year-old man with zero friends, Satoru flicked his staff and brought forth a distorted song of rain.

The skies twisted and were cleared with the gusto of an inaudible pop. Hoshino thought that the sun would shine upon them, but no—the void in the clouds conceived a dark bubble. The same moment Hoshino felt a wave of baseless, unbearable yearning, the bubble brought down a dribble of shadows—a drizzle of raindrops as black as ink.

Ah. If that was the case, then…

Hoshino let himself fall back on the floor. Though before he could ponder about his shitty life, the dark rain he thought would activate his life insurance—if he had one—didn’t even feel like rain. It didn’t even make him wet. Hell, it didn’t even pass by him. It went through his body, likely doing the same through the building.

But if there was one thing he noticed, it was that its touch was electrifying… energizing—so much so that he became aware of how the carve on his cheek and the chip on his ear were starting to heal. He wanted to laugh, but the thing fixed his ribs too… which was equal to the pain of getting his balls squeezed.

The sound of rain disappeared along with the blot of darkness in the sky not long after.

“We’re pulling out,” Satoru declared, breaking the silence. “Someone help the ones who got themselves restrained on the first floor; I’ll take care of Jerome. We’ll leave in five, so I need the mind link to be re-established. Someone wake Jizo up. And Yoshiya… how’s the situation from above?”

“Peachy… sir. It’s just a few ambulances… no sights of the local police, either—as expected.”

Lemon man. The fucker that Hazama sniped off. Eugh.

Hoshino raised his brow at the Butterfly walking toward him, making sure to let him know that he found him disgusting. That, and that he wasn’t a threat. Hoshino could get up and take a more defensive stance, but that’s what losers would do. So he just let Yoshiya snatch his wand back, along with the bag of lemons. Though Yoshiya emptied the bag at his side and let the lemons bounce, with one landing on Hoshino’s face.

“Bitch,” Hoshino mumbled as the man turned and walked away from him.

“The power ain’t mine. You can’t hurt me.” Yoshiya replied with a bit of a laugh, raising his hand and pressing two fingers to his temple. The bastards had already re-established their connections—the fight was really over.

“Lemon.”

Yoshiya clicked his tongue. “That’s not even a good one. You think I’m a first grader?”

“Leeeeeeeemon—” Hoshino repeated, dragging the word with such disgust. He humphed. “Lemmy.”

“Don’t get so cocky, Frenchie,” Yoshiya spat, matching the amount of disgust Hoshino put into his words. “Yes, we failed to kill the Afro Fucker. That’s all.”

And with that, Yoshiya disappeared—most likely the work of an invisibility spell—and left the stink of lemon in the air to force its way into Hoshino’s head. Though Hoshino was scared to admit it himself, there was no way the Butterflies would just pull out like that. Why didn’t Ishigami tell him to pursue? Why wasn’t Ishigami fighting? One hundred meters. All that bravado. That pleading. Was Ishigami protecting him too?

Hoshino dared not look away from the sky, his vision starting to blur.

They lost, didn’t they?