[Romani Oyama]
I was having a little trouble containing my excitement.
My drowsy nature had completely vanished, while small fragments of ice began to form in the air around me, drifting down toward the floor.
"Ice!?" Koneko tilted her head, catching one of the fragments in her open palm, watching it melt between her fingers with a curious expression.
Simply ignoring the existence of everyone around me, I moved my legs toward Viser.
On the first step, the smile on my face widened.
On the second, my demonic power was released in great quantity, saturating the air like an invisible current.
On the third step, a golden-covered book materialized in my hand.
"Answer my summons: Dark Magician Girl."
The tome opened on its own, its pages turning elegantly before stopping on the first page, entirely coated in gold. The entire volume began to glow in a dark, golden light, causing the air around it to vibrate softly.
"Ta! Ta!"
Over the golden light, the Dark Magician Girl appeared before me, swinging her staff with grace and bringing her fingers to the corners of her eyes in a carefree and undeniably cute pose.
She looked at me for a few seconds before shooting a furious glare toward Viser, who blinked in surprise at my familiar.
"Dark Burning Attack..."
Like a Pokémon master, command words left my mouth as I launched forward at speed toward Viser.
In the same instant, with a wicked smile spreading across her face, The Dark Magician Girl spun her staff, pointing it at the stray devil. A sphere began to form at its tip in a fraction of a second: a concentrated mass of black magic, the size of a cannonball, but with a density that compressed the air around it, emitting a deep and unsettling hum.
Viser barely had time to process what was happening.
The sphere cut through the air without ceremony and collided with the creature's left flank with a force that made the floor crack in waves from the point of impact.
BOOM.
The sound arrived half a second after the flash of violet-black light, like a delayed thunderclap.
"Aghhhhhhh!"
Viser was hurled backward violently, her massive body skidding across the floor and destroying everything in its path, leaving a deep furrow in the concrete.
"You filthy bitch!"
With a pained and furious scream, she drove her large front paws into the ground, braking against her own body's inertia. The Dark Magician Girl settled softly in the air, her staff still faintly smoking; the wicked smile from before had now been replaced by a serene and satisfied expression.
Taking advantage of Viser's attention being focused entirely on my familiar, I moved my feet and leapt into the air, raising my hand toward her.
Around my fingers, the air condensed immediately. The moisture froze in fractions of a second, crystallizing and solidifying, with small ice crystals interlacing one another in a precise construction.
In an instant...
Six shafts of crystalline, translucent ice materialized around me in an elegant arc, each of them slender as a stake, as long as an Olympic pole vault, with tips sharp enough to pierce anything that had the misfortune of being in their path.
Shortly after, they rotated slowly for a brief moment, orienting themselves like compass needles finding north. Then I thrust my arm forward with a smile spreading across my lips, and in that same second, all six lances fired at high speed.
The first pierced the right side of Viser's neck. The second drove in just below, into the torso. The third and fourth sealed the opposite side of the neck at crossed angles, like metal staples driven through thick leather. The fifth and sixth passed through the junction between neck and shoulder with surgical precision.
Caught completely off guard once again, Viser roared in pain, blood running down her body and staining the floor in dark pools, suffering even greater agony due to the devil-slaying properties of my ice.
Damn... this is so exciting. Why am I getting so thrilled at causing pain to another being?
Her eyes, previously wide with surprise, were now fixed on me with an intensity that burned like fire — which was ironic, given the ice embedded in her skin.
Shortly after, her hand cut through the air and seized my body, gripping with absurd force.
"I'm not just going to crush you..." Enraged and in pain, the front paw holding me tightened further, compressing my body and making my bones click against each other. "I'm going to drain every ounce of life from your body."
"Clack!"
The sound of my arm breaking echoed throughout the theater as Viser's smile widened even further, savoring the sight of my body being destroyed.
Pain...
That was the standard sensation of having your bones dislocated and probably broken in several places at the same time.
I could clearly feel the bones of my left arm shifting, some fragments tearing through skin from the inside. Honestly, I wasn't the kind of person most accustomed to pain. Without a shadow of a doubt, I was a cowardly rabbit when it came to physical suffering.
But...
Why did I want to laugh while my arm was breaking?
Damn, why am I feeling this sick pleasure? Why do I want to feel more? Why do I need to hold back a smile? Why do I feel like crying and laughing at the same time?
"Boy, the sound of your bones breaking is beautiful music..."
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
A laugh escaped my lips, cutting her words in half.
"Huh!? Boy, you broke..."
Again, she didn't even have time to finish her sentence. Watching the humanoid paw holding me become rapidly coated in purple ice, her eyes widened.
"Ma'am, it's not a good idea to hold onto an ice user."
I flashed her a smile, and in the next moment, a sphere of black magic collided with her paw, shattering it into several pieces with a dry and definitive crack.
"Bastard!"
As my body fell toward the ground, Viser's eyes seemed glued to my existence, as though in that moment I were the only thing in the world that mattered to her.
Before touching the ground, I raised my one still-functioning arm.
From the shadow of the concrete, something erupted.
It emerged from the floor with a wet, deep sound, coiling instantly around my waist: a dark and thick tentacle, its surface pulsing slightly like something alive. Shortly after, it bent, pressing its thick tip against the cracked concrete before pushing upward, lifting my body until I was suspended nearly four meters from the ground, my feet balanced upon it.
I looked down, examining my left arm, which hung at an angle that was clearly not correct, dark bloodstains soaking the sleeve of my clothes.
Then I smiled, as pain took hold of every centimeter of my body.
"Interesting..." I murmured to myself, moving the fingers of my broken arm just to feel the pain snap through the entire length of the limb.
Pleasant.
Disturbingly pleasant.
The tentacle beneath me pulsed, as if responding to my mood, and I realized there was something almost intuitive about it.
"Bastard! Bastard!" Viser began screaming in pain.
Huh?
I raised an eyebrow, noticing that her cries of pain were music to my ears.
I'm starting to worry about my own mental health.
"I'm going to destroy your balls and shove my arm up your ass!"
Viser raised her body with a guttural roar, releasing a great quantity of demonic power.
"Ladies shouldn't be so vulgar."
I smiled as the Dark Magician Girl appeared beside me in the air, alongside the tentacle, swinging her staff back and forth with an amused look, knowing full well I was clearly overstepping.
She knew.
She knew I was enjoying this too much.
I knew it too.
But it was time to put an end to this before I sank even deeper into this unpleasant and pleasurable sensation.
I flexed my legs on the tentacle at the same moment Viser pressed her chest, a greenish circle forming over her nipples.
Instantly, from the circle, several drops of acid were fired in my direction.
The tentacle launched me upward with enough force to make the air whistle around me. Only a single drop of acid pierced my forearm, rendering it useless and burning it from the inside out, leaving raw flesh exposed to the cold air of the theater.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Akeno and Rias let out a worried groan, preparing to intervene.
But...
Ladies, that won't be necessary.
Smiling like a maniac, I raised my hand toward Viser. Small shards of ice materialized near my palm, dense and gleaming, while the Dark Magician Girl floated beside me, letting out a cheerful hum as she pointed her staff and conjured a sphere of dark magic at its tip.
She shot me a sideways glance.
I returned the look with a smile, as the ice fragments stretched, expanded and thinned, until they became twelve icy lances.
From the perimeter of the black sphere, twelve shafts of ice erupted in an explosion, each lance longer and thicker than those used before, their edges catching the dim light of the theater and shattering it into white fragments that fell around us like shooting stars.
Following the black sphere, they began to spin.
Slowly for a single instant, before their rotational speed increased faster and faster, until the sound they produced was a deep and constant howl cutting through the air.
Viser's eyes went wide, her hatred replaced by fear as she watched the black sphere surrounded by ice stakes.
Meanwhile, the lances advanced in a descending spiral, the spears rotating around it like a constellation of ice in revolution, and each tip that grazed the air left a trail of crystals.
Viser, appearing seized by fear, raised her front paw and roared, releasing all her demonic power in a greenish circle close against her palm, firing her demonic acid.
The acid wave met the lances surrounding the black sphere.
The first shaft disintegrated.
The second shattered as well.
The third cracked in half, but did not stop.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth forced their way through the acid as though it barely existed.
And the black sphere did not decelerate by a single millimeter.
The impact did not have the dramatic sound I had expected.
Simply, the sphere collided with the center of Viser's torso, and the remaining icy lances, still spinning, drove in a fan pattern around the point of impact, each one striking from a different angle and pinning her body to the ground.
The ice expanded from the points of contact.
Not gradually.
All at once.
Viser opened her mouth to scream, and what came out was half a roar and half a dry crack as the layer of ice climbed her neck, covering everything with a ruthless and beautiful coldness.
Silence...
In the midst of that silence stood a translucent ice statue in the middle of the hall.
Suddenly, the ice cracked in several places at once, and it shattered completely, its fragments scattering across the theater floor in a sound almost musical.
The Dark Magician Girl crossed her arms over her staff and tilted her head slightly toward the destroyed figure, with a satisfied expression. Then she threw me one last smile before dissolving into dark-golden fragments.
With a smile, my eyes fell on my left arm, still hanging at the wrong angle, the raw flesh of the forearm exposed where the acid had passed through, blood running slowly and mixing with the concrete dust around it.
Then I looked at the shards of ice that had once been Viser.
"That was fun..."
The words escaped my lips honestly, and that was exactly the problem.
As my body plummeted, a thought crossed my mind.
Defeat had a bitter taste, while victory was a gastronomic ecstasy.
And I had enjoyed this far too much.
Disturbingly too much.
Author's Note: Well... that's probably not a healthy reaction to having your arm shattered, covered in acid, and nearly beaten to death.
On the bright side, Romani appears to be discovering new things about himself. On the less bright side, those discoveries are making everyone around him increasingly concerned about his long-term psychological stability.
Viser came to this theater expecting an easy meal. Instead, she accidentally became an unpaid therapist and helped uncover several deeply troubling personality traits.
As for Dark Magician Girl, she remains adorable, supportive, and completely willing to participate in acts of extreme violence. Truly, the ideal companion.