“Here we are, Fukuoka Prefectural Shuyukan High School” konchuu said as the two made their way up to the gate. Konchuu had a katana on his back, his weapon.

  “Yeah I know, I used to go here before I found out I was an angel gear.” Yui explained.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I got pulled out of school when I joined, they said that they'd provide free schooling and education. That hasn't really started yet.” Yui explained.

  “Oh, yeah I got pulled out of school too.” konchuu said, staring up at the school, which was pretty big.

  The two walked in through the front entrance, the security allowed them past after konchuu pulled out an HAS badge. After they passed, yui could tell they were talking about her, she wasn't surprised, she used to be pretty friendly with the guards.

  “So, what exactly are we doing here? It doesn't exactly look like a sin attack’s happening.” The girl said as they walked around the courtyard, looking around. This place felt.. Boring.. she expected to feel nostalgic, but she guessed that enough time hadn't passed for that feeling to pop-up.

  “well, a janitor reported seeing what was definitely a sin dragging something through one of the hallways, and that's about all we know. The janitor said it looked human, so it can't be any further along than phase 1” the green haired boy said.

  “Hm.”

  They eventually made their way into one of the buildings. Checking the area.

  “Yui, can you sense it?”

  “Huh- oh oh umm, n-not yet but.. why do we neeeed my senses? I mean it's a sin after all, I doubt itll be too hard to find.” The girl said nervously, to the confusion of the boy next to her.

  “Well.. yes, but it would be more efficient that way.”

  “Pfft, efficiency smiciency, all we need is some pure human grit to find this thing.” The girl said.

  “Um…okay?”

  The building was eerily quiet, the kind of silence that only exists in a school after hours—heavy with the scent of floor wax and the ghosts of frantic scribbling. Konchuu’s hand rested instinctively on the hilt of his katana, his eyes darting between the rows of lockers.

  "Grit, huh?" Konchuu murmured, his voice echoing slightly. "I mean, I'm all for high-effort investigation, but this place has four floors and a basement. If it’s dragging something, we should be looking for-"

  "Found it!" Yui interrupted, pointing dramatically at the blood lined floors.

  “Fresh,” he said quietly. “Within the hour.”

  The air felt heavier now.

  The building didn’t feel boring anymore.

  It felt like it was watching them.

  They followed the trail carefully. It smeared along the lockers, down the stairs, then toward the basement door — the old science storage wing that hadn’t been used in years.

  The stairwell lights below were off.

  “So.. is this a date?”

  “Huh?” yui looked at him with a face of surprise and burning cheeks.

  “Well I mean.. the last time we met, i pretty much asked me out didnt I?” the boy said

  The girl couldn't believe he was being so direct and blunt about this, she was panicking internally. She'd never been flirted with before. “um, well… I can't really say right now. I've never been on a date before”

  “I'll take that as a maybe” the boy said before hearing something, it was the sound of flesh being dragged.

  Konchuu focused, trying to figure out where that then was coming from..

  CLANG!

  Something attacked him, and he blocked it with his sword. He drew it from his back so fast yui hadn't even seen him move. And then both teens noticed.

  The person who had attacked konchuu, was a regular human girl.

  “Who the hell are ya?! Ya with that other fella?! I swear I’ll use this thing, I ain’t kiddin’!” the girl held a knife in both hands, braving it tightly. Here words were frantic, panicked.

  “Other guy? What other guy? We're hinomoto anti sin division sin hunters. We're not gonna hurt you” the boy said looking at the girl who was taller than him.

  “Ya kiddin’ me? Ya think I’m stupid or somethin’?” The girl backed up a little bit, as if trying to run away.

  “H-himoru?” Yui finally recognized the girl, it had been a while since she'd seen her, she couldn't really recognize her at first with how unkempt she was, and how frazzled she seemed compared to her normal demeanor.

  “Yui?!” The girl hadn't been looking behind the older boy, she just knew that there were two of them and they might be trying to kill her.

  The girl ran into yui’s arms and hugged her tightly. “Ya’ve no idea how glad I am t’see a familiar face right now! What happened t’ya? When I came back t’school everyone was sayin’ ya up and left! What’s that supposed t’mean?” himoru asked in a heavy Osaka accent

  “It's.. a long story. What I wanna know is. What happened to you?” the pink haired girl asked her friend.

  “That’s a long story, yeah? C’mon, we can’t just stand ‘round in the hallway! That sin’ll sniff us out in no time!” The girl said,

  “Well actually, we're looking for it. And we have to find it, fast”, yui explained, which caused her friend great confusion.

  “Why in the world would ya wanna go lookin’ for one o’ them things? Ya tryin’ t’get yerself killed or what??”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “It's.. a secret” yui said, not letting her friend in on what was actually happening.

  “Hey, earlier you said something about another guy, what exactly were you talking about?” Konchuu asked the girl

  “Well, when I showed up at school yesterday, I thought it was proper weird nobody was around. Then outta nowhere a sin jumps me! I’ve been hidin’ ever since yesterday mornin’! Then earlier today some creepy old geezer shows up tryin’ t’kill me too! Swear he was an angel gear or somethin’- bloke could turn his own blood into weapons and stuff!” the girl explained.

  This caused yui and konchuu to look at each other.

  “That's the same guy who stabbed you right?” She whispered a question over to him.

  “Yeah, he was pretty strong for a phase 1, if they sent him in, that means we can't let our guard down. Yui, try to see if you can sense him” he whispered back.

  “I-i-i c” she stammered, unable to find a way to finish her sentence.

  “You can sense him, can't you?”

  “Of course I can, he's a sin after all.. but.. ” konchuu noticed that she seemed rather uncomfortable when he brought up her angel gear.

  "What is it?" he asked, noticing her nervousness

  "Nothing it's just… can't we do this ourselves. Without the help of my instincts?” she asked nervously.

  Himoru flinched at their hushed exchange, knife still clutched white-knuckled in her hands. "Oi! Quit whisperin’ like shady weirdos and tell me what’s goin’ on already!" Her Osaka accent was strong

  “Uh, like I said it's a long story.” Yui said, before her sin senses started kicking in on overdrive.

  She turned around quickly, just quickly enough to not get stabbed by a knife made of blood.

  Before yui could even fully understand what was going on, konchuu struck at the man's abdomen, throwing him back.

  He was still, so fast.

  “Damn, you again. I didn't know the HAS would be sending a couple of kids. And I didn't realize you were sending an angel gear.” The man said, looking to the pink haired girl. Everything in his body was telling him that this girl, was the predator, and that he was the prey. But looking at her now, that couldn't have been any further from the truth.

  “You did a number on me last time kid, you and your white haired friend.” The man turned his blood knives into a chain, slinging it at the boy.

  “Himoru, get back!” Yui shouted, pushing her friend toward the safety of a classroom.

  Konchuu pulled the sword off his back, it was not a regular katana, instead, it was similar to one of the butterfly knives he had used against her in their last fight.

  Instead of a single tempered edge, the blade was composed of dozens of interlocking, razor-sharp segments held together by a high-tension internal cable.

  The man's blood chain whipped through the air so hard that even seconds after, the air whistled.

  With a flick of his wrist, the blade of his katana didn't just swing,it shattered into a segmented whip of razor-sharp steel. Like a string of razor blades. No, sharper than that, like a bracelet of broken glass, the whip was so sharp that it made the air itself looked like it was being cut.

  "You're not the only one who can change his reach," Konchuu said, his voice dropping into a cold, combat-focused monotone.

  He manipulated the hilt like the handles of a giant butterfly knife, using the momentum of the segments to create a spinning vortex of steel. The blood-chain collided with the whirling segments and was instantly shredded into a red mist. Without missing a beat, Konchuu stepped into the man’s guard, retracting the blade into a solid sword for a split second to deliver a sharp slash across the mans chest, then immediately flicking it back out.

  The segmented blade made movements, unexplainable movements. A normal human shouldn't be capable of something like this, a normal human wasn't capable of this, but konchuu had trained so hard, that you could hardly call him normal. It moved around the man's body, cutting at his face and bashing at his heels.

  Konchuu utilized the centrifugal force of the heavy tip to wrap the blade around the man's defensive blood-shield, the serrated edges biting into the conjured gore and spraying it across the lockers.

  The man roared, trying to reform his blood into a spear, but Konchuu’s movements were a blur of "open-and-close" transitions. He caught the spear between two segments of the steel whip, twisted his wrist to lock the mechanism, and yanked. The sheer tension of the high-tensile cable snapped the hardened blood like glass.

  Meanwhile

  yui and her friend backed away from something in the classroom. There was a teen covered in blood, laying on a pile of bodies, sat in a pool of blood, the boy stared at them with a starving grin.

  “Oh hey, More people showed up. I hadn't expected food to just deliver itself on a silver platter to me.” The boy said, licking blood off his lip.

  This guy must've been the sin they were sent to dispatch. Yui felt the incredible instinct to kill him, she couldn't bear it. It was like her body was showing her every possible way to attack and kill him. A golden light poured out of her finger tips, but she clenched her fists, holding it back like one would hold back tears, or pee.

  She got in a stance, like she was preparing to punch it. But her form, her stance was absolutely atrocious.

  Her stance was terrible, her technique was lacking even for a normal person, and her strength was nowhere near enough.

  And the fact that she was trying to fight a sin with that.. It was nothing short of stupid.

  The creature got up and ran at her, she backed away slightly, getting just slightly out of range of the sin.

  The sin looked at her with a disgusting grin. He could smell her, the fear in her heart. This girl, was terrified, she was like an entire buffet that he couldn't wait to dig into.

  She barely moved out of the way, which made her look even more delicious to him.

  The sin lunged again, faster this time- bloody and very hungry.

  Yui forced herself not to let the light erupt.

  Her body screamed at her to move, to pivot left, hook under his ribs, tear upward with radiant light. She ignored it.

  Instead, she stumbled back, throwing a sloppy jab that barely grazed his cheek. He laughed.

  “Is that it?”

  He swiped. She ducked too late, his nails sliced her sleeve, drawing a thin line of red across her arm.

  Golden light glowed instinctively.

  She clenched her jaw and smothered it.

  No. Not like that.

  She stepped in again, copying a basic stance she half-remembered from gym class, driving a desperate straight punch into his sternum. It hurt her more than him.

  But it pushed him back.

  He blinked, surprised.

  She was shaking- terrified, but still standing.

  “I’m not,” she breathed, fists trembling, “your prey.”

  And this time, when he charged, she met him halfway.

  He looked at the girl in utter disbelief, no-one he had come across so far had ever dared to put up such a resistance to him. This girl was absolutely crazy, she was scared as hell, and she was trembling, but she was still fighting back.

  The sin laughed, “That's hilarious! You're absolutely pathetic!”

  Before he could do anything to her, he was slammed in the face with a chair. Himoru had thrown the chair and grabbed her friend by the arm, trying to lead her away.

  “Come on girl, let's get. Ya can't fight that thing.”

  Yui resisted, she didn't wanna back away. She wanted to fight, she wanted to fight a sin on her own.

  Yui yanked her arm back.

  “No.”

  Himoru froze. “No?! Are ya outta yer mind?!”

  The sin wiped splinters of chair from his face, blood sliding down his cheek in thick ribbons. He was smiling wider now.

  “Oh, this just keeps getting better. My food's never fought back before”

  Yui’s breathing was ragged. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her.

  Use it.

  Burn him.

  End him.

  Before she knew it, she was grabbed by the hip and thrown to the ground. He mounted and started beating down on her.

  The girl tried blocking but the boy was too aggressive, every punch rattled her brain in her skull, causing it to feel like products being shaken in a box, no, more like fritter batter being shaken in the bowl.

  Whether it was in reaction to the physical pain, or in dismay at her own weakness, a stream of tears poured down the young girls face.

  — yesterday—

  “What exactly are you doing?” Ash asked the girl who was laying on the floor, sweaty and exhausted.

  Ash had said that he would be training everyone on the team before hand. Liun had apparently already been training with him, but this was her first time training with him.

  “why exactly are you holding back?” Ash asked her as he knelt down to her level. “By now you should've at least been able to adapt to my fighting style considering how easy I'm taking it. I mean you're an angel gear, it's only natural that you'd be able to adapt. So why aren't you?”

  “I- I don't want to.” The girl said, eyes on the floor.

  “Hm?”

  “I don't want to rely on that. Not anymore” she explained.

  “Rely? Rely on what?” her conductor asked, not understanding what she meant.

  “That instinct. Yesterday, on that Mission, when I lost, so decisively, I realized something. I haven't actually been capable of anything, against konchuu I let my instincts carry me to keep the fight going. Against that sin that attacked the building, my instinct was what kept me alive. And yesterday when I denied that instinct, I lost so badly, if not for luck I would've died. And that made me realize, I have actually accomplished anything” she explained," I don't wanna rely on it again. I wanna know how to fight, myself”

  Ash looked down at her, “that's possibly… the dumbest thing I've ever heard.”

  “Huh!?”

  —present—

  The girl had been knocked unconscious by the rain of blows

  “Aww, I didn't want you to stop struggling.” The boy said, looking down on her unconscious body like she was food.

  And then, himoru picked up a metal bar and hit him across the back of the head, but it didn't do a thing, instead of hurting him, which wasn't possible, the bar bent around his head, like this was some kinda cartoon or something.

  “Oh man, I totally forgot about you” the boy turned to her. Before swiping at her with his sharp fingernails.

  She tried to back away in fear, but his nails cut across her body like knives, leaving five, deep, long gashes.

  Meanwhile

  Konchuu had heard the girls struggling on the inside of the classroom, and it was then that he decided, to end this quickly.

  You’re distracted,” the blood-user smirked, crimson pooling at his feet.

  “I am,” Konchuu replied flatly.

  And then he vanished.

  Not literally, just speed.

  The floor cracked under his step as he closed the distance. The sin’s blood flooded upward into a wall, but Konchuu didn’t attack the shield.

  He attacked the man.

  The blade fragmented mid-thrust, segments spiraling around the shield instead of striking it. The high-tension cable tightened with a vicious whine, wrapping the construct and the man together in a constricting coil.

  “You think reach is everything,” Konchuu muttered.

  He twisted.

  The serrated steel segments bit inward from every angle at once. The blood shield collapsed under internal torque, shredding into mist. The man choked as the cable tightened across his ribs, then he was split clean into three thirds.

  Konchuu jumped into the room, seeing what was going on, before the boy could truly kill the girl, konchuu cut him in half, with his sword.

  “W-what the? Where'd you come from?” The boy questioned as his body stitched itself back together, thanks to the regeneration.

  The boy was ready to attack again, kill the sin and end this competition. Or at least he would've. In any other situation he would've killed this thing without hesitation.

  But in this situation as he looked at the civilian girl who was currently bleeding out on the floor, and just outside the door, the blood sin that he had fought earlier was regenerating as well.

  This meant that he had to fight two sins at the same time while a girl was bleeding out and Yui was unconscious, all while he didn't know what the one in front of him could do.

  He knew w

  hat the smart move was. He grabbed the teenage sin that stood in front of him by the collar, and he threw the boy out the window. This was to make sure that old man couldn't get his hands on him

  Then, konchuu picked up both girls on his back, and leapt out the window.

  To be continued--->