=-[Prologue: No Ending In Sight]-=

There he stood, the stale wind howling sinisterly around him. The bodies of his friends, comrades, lying all around him. Asia, Koneko, Akeno, Rias, Xenovia, Irina, Kiba, Gasper, and several more people he knows… even Cao Cao, Vali, his team, and Ophis.

Bloody.

Unmoving.

Dead.

His figure wobbled, him dropping to his knees on the rocky ground with a pained grunt. His eyes were crying, yet he was silent. Pain throbbed all around his body, yet he didn't feel anything.

"How… did this happen?" Issei looked up to a figure of a man. His white eyes bore through his very soul. A smudge of red was painted on his white cheek.

Was he the one who did this? Did this guy… kill them?

"You bastard…" His clean face contorted into anger. Issei slowly stood up, though he was still shaky. "What… have you done?!"

"…" The man's silver hair reflected the moonlight to Issei's body. "… You seem to have a misunderstanding, Red Dragon Emperor."

"What else…" His Balance Breaker armor slowly materialized around him. "could this mean?!"

"I don't associate myself to the weak." The man replied. The wind blew once again, his black cloak fluttering against the wind. "And they… are weak."

"DAMN YOU!" Issei's gauntleted hand smashed into the man's face, yet he didn't even budge an inch. But Issei didn't care. He was too busy being furious to even notice this fact.

After the fifth punch, the man stopped the boy's attack with his hand. A huge shockwave blew around the two, sending rocks and debris flying everywhere.

"They are weak, but you are strong." The white-haired man continued. "Strong enough…"

"SHUT UP!" He cocked his other hand back, sending another punch to the guy.

"… to kill them."

Issei stopped dead on his tracks.

"What… did you say?" His voice cracked like his crumbling mind. His armor started disappearing, revealing his bloody figure.

Blood that isn't his.

"I was watching you kill them." The man's cold voice brought him further down in his realization. "They kept calling out your name, hoping for you to hear them… but you never did."

"S-Stop…" Memories started flashing back inside his head.

'Issei, please stop this!'

'Ise-kun!'

'Sekiryuutei…'

Issei clutched his head in pain.

"You rampaged endlessly, destroying and killing anything in your path." The unknown guy walked passed him, and overlooked the dead bodies around them.

"First it was the cat. Then the blonde-sword user. You slew them like the weaklings they were, one by one… Until it was the redhead and the little black-haired girl that was remaining."

Issei knows those two. "Rias, and Ophis…"

The man glanced back at him. "They were the ones who suffered the most out of everybody. Probably because they're the ones who love you the most. Do you want to know how they died?"

"No…" The light behind Issei's eyes slowly diminished. "No…!"

"They kept on clinging to you until the end, whispering your name in your ears…" As if he didn't hear him, the man continued. "How much they love you, and that they were sorry for treating you like that…"

'Geez, Issei. You're horrible!'

'… The worst.'

"Then you choked both of them to death." As soon as he said that, the despair-filled faces of Rias and Ophis flashed inside Issei's mind.

"NOOOOOOO!" Yelling to himself, tears endlessly flowed down from his eyes. His sorrow, guilt, all of his feelings; like his tears, it all began to leave his being. "WHY…! That can't be true… I would… never hurt them…"

The man faced his back, his face as emotionless as a picture. "You wished for power, didn't you? You've always berated yourself for being pathetic. But now you have that power."

As if mocking him, the heavens started crying in the form of rain.

"How does it feel to have real power, Hyoddou Issei?" A roar of a thunder, then the pitter patter of the rainfall.

"If this was the power I've always wanted…" Issei's lifelessly muttered to himself. "then I wish I've stayed the weakling that I was before everything happened…"

"You're quite selfish, wishing left and right like that." The white-haired guy closed his eyes, wet strands of his hair cascading down on his face. "But you're too late. They're already dead."

The blood on Issei's hands was washed down by the rain, but the feeling of remorse inside him never vanished. He didn't even care to answer anymore.

"I can restart your life." Sitting beside him, he showed Issei a complex magic circle floating above his hand. "But some things will drastically change."

The brunette slowly turned his head towards the man. His face was wet with the rain, but the trails of tears were distinguishable as day and night. "… Will, they come back to life…?"

"Of course." He closed his hand, followed by the magic circle fading away. "But you're very being… no, Hyoddou Issei himself, will die. Essentially, you will be a different person in this next life. Do you stil—"

"Do it." Issei stood with his eyes foreshadowed. "I don't care what happens to me, or what you'll gain from this. Just do it."

"… Very well." The man also stood up. "Before we start, let me clear two things here. One, I am not going to gain anything from this. You'll probably forget about me along with your very self, but I will mention this just for formality."

"Second…" The magic circle before reappeared once again, but instead of the man's hand, it appeared below them in a twenty meter diameter. All of the bodies were effectively inside it too.

"This isn't a reborn or something along those lines. I'm transferring all of your memories, along with these people's, to another timeline. Though they will be okay since they're already dead, you, on the other hand, will be affected by your other self's personality. He might even dominate you and completely erase your existence. Do you still accept?"

"You've heard me one time." Issei's determination never faltered.

The man paused for a second, before grinning slightly.

"You children all have such similar eyes every time…" He whispered to himself. "Brace yourself."

The circle exploded in dazzling light of white and black. In a blink, the dead people and Issei vanished, but the man remained standing where he was.

"…" He looked behind him to see a gigantic dragon and a door in the middle of nowhere with the numbers '666' engraved on it.

"Thank you for waiting. Shall we start?"

=-Prologue End-=

A/N: Hello, DxD fandom. I'm Blazeo-kun, a weird author who has a thing for turning certain MCs into pricks and bastards. I've already started with Tatsumi from Akame ga Kiru, and now my new target is Issei~. Like all author, I also need the three basic needs to live in this treacherous planet: Inspiration, time, and reviews!

Now you might have some questions, so I'll save you some slacks and answer them now.

Possible Q #1: Why is the chapter so short?
Answer #1: My writer self grew from a certain website where short prologues are the norm. Don't worry as I like to keep my actual chapters to be as long as 2,500 to 3,000 words. It's pretty short here, I know, but that's my limit. Sorry!

Possible Q #2: Why is there an OC right off the bat? That's a huge turn-off, you know?
Answer #2: Yes, he is an OC, but he won't be appearing on the story anymore, unless a deus ex machina is needed. He also isn't a huge character within the story, so the best that he can make in terms of screen time would be some cameos. Maybe at the ending he'll officially appear, but he's more like a tool to set the OOC Issei. Sorry for calling you a tool, Sitri. (You can consult my profile for further answers regarding this topic.)

Possible Q #3: Will Issei be OP?
Answer #3: Yes, though not in terms of destructive power. Rest assured, he'll 'curbstomp' every female enemy he'll have…

Possible Q #4: Are all of your ANs as long as this one?
Answer #4: No, except if I have to announce some things.

Possible Q#5: Lemonz?
Answer #5: I'm not a great writer like some here in this fandom, but I will try. It might be a bit disturbing though, considering Issei's new character…

Possible Q #6: Do you have a beta-reader?
Answer #6: Sadly, no. I don't even know how that contract works… ehehe…

So that's that. See ya on the next chapter~!

Just remember. Everything I write is an illusion.
~Blazeo-kun~