A small flicker of flame danced around in Issei's cupped hand. It would run along the lines in his palm, twirl around his finger and then jump back into the centre of his hand, appearing to dance in a joyous fashion. Its brightness increased as it flared once, twice and then thrice as it slowly grew in size before it suddenly exploded into a small cloud of smoke.
Issei clenched his hand shut to hide the smoke from his peers and his teacher, even though he was sure that his educational instructor had seen the whole thing. Issei didn't mind though. He knew his chemistry teacher was a laidback woman who wouldn't call him out on it in front of the entire class, choosing to keep him after class for a little while and that was what Issei was hoping would happen.
Today was the day that a normal Issei would almost always be killed by Raynare the Fallen Angel.
However, being the one True Issei and an immensely powerful being meant that fate could not control what happens to Issei. Instead, Issei would control fate itself and bend its will to bother others for his fleeting amusement and entertainment. After living for a millennia, one would usually run out of things to do, so these childish acts were the only things that Issei was able to cherish.
"Alright, guys. I expect you to read page seventy to eighty in your textbooks for homework. That means you too, Issei. Oh, could you also stay behind for a bit, kid? I have a few things I want to ask you. Class dismissed!" In a flurry of movements, most of Issei's peers shoved their things into their bags, followed by their immediate departure. A couple of students hung back in the classroom, conversing amongst themselves as Issei stretched his arms above his head.
"Did you see my little trick, huh?" Issei moaned as his shoulder cracked in its socket, waves of numb pleasure rushing down his spine. He lowered his arms, gathered his textbook and game console and placed them in his bag, waiting for his teacher to respond. The young woman stared down at him with a frown, her hands on her hips.
"If you think I'll believe that that was real magic, you must think I'm an idiot. Although, it was pretty sweet." Issei sheepishly rubbed the back of his head with a grin, his mind shouting from joy as his cover had not been compromised. Deep down, Issei knew that Rias Gremory had detected his magic, as well as Sona Sitri, and instantly regretted his impulsive action. However, he knew that those two would pass it off as nothing more than a mere coincidence and leave at that, but if he tinkered with the arcane once more on school grounds, he'd have more than few answers to question, as well as a few people he'd be seeing.
"Thanks, I guess?" Issei's teacher grinned and ruffled the messy hair of what seemed to be an innocent young boy in her eyes, a groan of complaint coming from said boy.
"But don't mess around in class like that again. I know you think school is boring, as well as homework, but I at least want you to listen in class so you have a decent chance of getting a high grade." Issei scratched his cheek with a faint smile.
"Well, I do try my hardest to complete my homework, but it's just sooooooo boring." The teacher chuckled.
"I agree with you there. When I was at school, which wasn't too long ago mind you, I absolutely despised doing homework. I also hated how angry my teachers would get when I openly admitted that I hadn't even tried to complete it." The teacher folded her arms and leaned on a nearby desk. Issei supported his head with a hand as his eyes lazily tracked the teacher and he sighed, noticing the setting sun in his peripherals.
"They only wanted the best for you, just like you want the best for me. However, that doesn't mean I'm doing my homework because you care for me. I'd rather waste my time playing video games." The teacher rose an eyebrow.
"You remind me of myself when I was your age." Issei grinned and reached into his bag, pulling his handheld out with an extravagant flourish of his hand.
"Wanna play? I bet I could easily beat you." The teacher huffed and pushed herself off of the desk she was leaning on, shoving a hand into a pocket.
"I would if I still wasn't at work." Issei's grin fell into a pout as the teacher walked away from the omnipotent being, a faint smile present on her face. "I have things to do in the staffroom, kid, so you're gonna have to leave now. As much as you hate to hear it, I can't leave you in here for safety reasons, yada yada yada. All of that crap." Issei shoved his handheld back into his bag and pushed his chair out with his feet.
"Fine, fine. I'll spare you the trouble of dealing with a teenager who's filled with angst and leave." Issei stood on his feet, pushed his chair under his desk with a single hand and slung the strap of his bag around his neck, feeling the comfortable weight of the useful accessory under his opposite arm.
"Angst? You are literally anything but that monster you just described." Issei chuckled and quickly left the classroom with pocketed hands, waiting in the hall for his teacher as she collected a few papers off of her podium.
"I'm still not doing my homework, though." Issei shouted as he waited for the educational instructor, the sun slowly falling behind the horizon outside the window he was facing. The sun was still bright and gave the sky a comfortable tangerine hue, but it brought comfort to the immortal being as he had forgotten what a sunset had looked like. Issei's teacher, after she had grabbed her bag and had left the classroom, locked the door behind her. She furrowed her brow when she noticed Issei, held a hand to her hip and loudly cleared her throat.
"You're still here? I'm sure you have better things to do, kid, like the homework that you're supposed to complete." Issei snorted and casually waved a hand in front of his face.
"Dying is better than doing homework, you know." Issei's teacher sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
"Of course it is. Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow. If you don't kill yourself over doing your homework, that is." The teacher winked and left without saying another word, a hand raised as she slowly strode down the lengthy corridor.
Issei sighed and scratched his head as he awkwardly stood in the middle of the corridor, not a single soul in sight. In the distance, the shouts and cries of ordinary teenagers doing ordinary things were very much recognised by the omnipotent being, something he continued to listen to until they faded away as he began his trek home.
"Maybe I could buy myself an ice cream before Raynare finds me." He had muttered to himself, gripping the strap of his bag until his knuckles turned white. No matter how hard he had tried to stall the inevitable, fate somehow found a way to control Issei's future, even if it was for a single moment, and he absolutely despised that. He despised the fact that the meeting with Raynare was a predetermined event, something that was unavoidable.
Issei fell onto his bed with a pleasured moan, collecting the fabrics of his bedsheets in his hand. He clenched his fist, slowly shut his eyes and smiled, knowing that he had avoided a very painful death just by avoiding his killer on his way home.
Even if he was set to die many days after his initial meeting with Raynare, it was still reassuring to know that the encounter that would lead to his death didn't even occur; the meeting on the bridge, Raynare's innocent act, the promise of a date. None of it happened and Issei genuinely felt safe.
"Right…to celebrate my life, maybe I should do some homework." Issei sat up, silently yawning as he did so, and reached into his school bag. He pulled his handheld console out of it, eyed the plastic electronic device for a few seconds, grimaced and tossed it onto the empty bedding next to him. He retrieved his textbook and an empty notebook from the bag and silently flicked through the pages of his textbook, an eyebrow twitching from annoyance. He rapidly flipped through the pages. "So I forgot what my homework was, huh?"
Issei groaned and threw his books onto the floor where they would stay until the next morning, the two objects silently weeping from their lack of attention and use. He didn't care about the inanimate object's feelings, though. They couldn't even have emotions in the first place, so the thought of a book crying forced a grin onto Issei's face because it was a stupid and idiotic idea that came from an omnipotent being.
Having nothing productive to do with himself, Issei sighed and decided he'd dedicate himself to his video games. He grabbed his handheld, turned it on with a press of a button, and held it above his face as he fell back onto his bed, the ceiling above him blurred because of the intense focus his eyes were placing on the console.
As Issei saw the first pixels of light on the menu screen of his favourite game, three piercing knocks were heard on his door, followed by the opening of said construct. In stepped his mother, a grin on her face as she pounced into the room, "Issei, a girl called Yuuma Amano is at the door. She said she wanted to talk to you! Is she a friend of yours?"
Life or death. It didn't matter to the omnipotent being. He'd regenerate in minutes if he was killed outside of his own home, so there was no reason for him to be afraid. His hands were trembling, his hair shadowing his eyes. No, he would tell himself. It wasn't fear he was feeling. It was excitement. He was excited. Excited to change the fate of this poor Issei by killing the Fallen Angel, the being that would have inevitably killed this otherwise ordinary human child.
And that human child did not deserve that excruciating pain.
Issei crept over to his window and peered through a gap in the curtains. In the dark night street, in front of his house, was Raynare the Fallen Angel in the form of an innocent schoolgirl. It wasn't anything Issei couldn't handle. He could simply torch the impure being before they could say anything and be done with the whole thing. But Issei didn't want it to end in a single second. He wanted to savour the feeling of victory, the screams of the Fallen Angel as she burned to death.
A smile crept onto Issei's face. It wasn't a joyous smile. It was a psychopathic smile, one that you would expect to see on a serial killer's face as they stalked their next victim. Issei didn't have to stalk his victim, though. They had willingly come to him. And they would pay for what they had done in the many universes Issei had observed.
"I'll be down in a second, mom." Issei said in a sickly sweet voice. Issei's mom left the room with a satisfied nod, leaving the door open behind her. Issei continued to stare out the window for a second before his smile left his face. He gripped the side of his head with a frown, pain erupting through his skull as he forcefully pulled his hair in its socket. "What's wrong with me…? Has this omnipotence made me insane?"
Issei turned away from the window.
"So, what do you want? I don't know you." Issei and Raynare were in a more private place for their conversation. It was only a nearby park that was designed for children, but Issei found himself sitting on one of the two swings in the park because there was nowhere else to sit. Not even a simple bench.
Raynare stood in front of Issei, her hands in the pockets of her Kuoh Academy blazer. Issei immediately noticed this difference. To blend in and to easily lure Issei outside, Raynare would have obtained a Kuoh Academy uniform to trick him into believing that she was a student he had made contact with. However, Issei knew better than that because he had watched the Fallen Angel deceive the various versions of himself multiple times.
"Well, uhh, this is kinda embarrassing…but…would you go out on a date with me?" Issei jumped to his feet.
"I refuse!" He had shouted, a nearby flock of birds shooting out of the trees they were nesting in. Any man with common sense would deny a girl that had seemingly followed them home. A girl would confess to the boy during school hours or leave a letter in their locker that requests their presence at a certain location, not trail behind them for a rough thirty minutes until they reached their home. Everyone knew that was weird and creepy, even the most deranged beings in the universe.
Raynare pouted and crossed her arms with a huff.
"Why!?" Issei grinned and pointed a finger at the Fallen Angel with his other hand on his hip, an aura of confidence exuding out of him. Firstly, he would try to persuade the Fallen Angel to leave him alone. If that didn't work, he'd fight and possibly kill her. Knowing the Fallen Angel, she'd fight before Issei's persuasion could start and it would lead to the death of one of them. Issei thought it would be Raynare.
"Because you don't go to my school." Raynare spluttered and motioned to her uniform, trying to gather her words.
"B-but I'm wearing the uniform. Students can only get it, right!?" Issei laughed as brashly as he could, his other hand now on his hip as he stared up at the sky.
"That's possible, but you could have stolen it! Also…I know you have a secret that you mustn't share with an ordinary human." Raynare used her two wings to launch herself back, her teeth grit, as a giant dust cloud formed. Issei couldn't see through the thick smock, but he had extraordinary sensory abilities so blocking Raynare's strike was too easy for him.
"Y-you…! What do you know about me?" Issei deflected Raynare's kick with a hand, watching as several limbs darted in and out of his Issei's limited sight. All of them had been perfectly deflected with ease. Meanwhile, Issei remained silent to try and provoke the Fallen Angel, but as Issei narrowly avoided a light spear by tilting his head to the side, he decided he'd need to speak up lest he be killed by his own foolishness.
"I know you're a Fallen Angel and that you want to kill me because of a Sacred Gear I have inside of me." Issei summoned a rapidly spinning ball of wind in his palm and threw it up into the air, watching as a silent explosion instantly dispelled the cloud of dust. Raynare was panting, sweat dripping from her face, shock present on her face due to the wind explosion and the fact that Issei was unfazed by her assault. He wasn't even out of breath in the slightest, not a single hair was out of place, and he certainly wasn't impressed.
"Tch. You're stronger than I expected." Issei pursed his lips as he owlishly blinked.
"You reckon? I mean, I'm just an ordinary human, right?" Raynare growled and pointed a finger at Issei.
"Ordinary human? You're anything but. That doesn't matter, though. Soon, you'll be dead!" Raynare lunged at Issei with a light spear in her hand, her wings propelling her at speeds that were barely visible with the naked eye, her spear aiming for the human's heart. He stepped to the side, grabbed Raynare by the hair and pulled her head back as hard as he can, a grin forming on his face as Raynare screeched from the excruciating pain that erupted all over the back of her head.
"So I'm not an ordinary human, huh? Oh well." Issei lifted Raynare into the air with an arm that had been reinforced with magic, the Fallen Angel kicking and screaming and demanding that she be put down or else. Issei chuckled in response and stared into the impure being's fear-filled violet eyes. "That means I can kill you, right?" Issei rose a hand that had instantly been consumed by a raging blue fire, inching his appendage closer and closer until it was a mere centimetre away from the Fallen Angel's chest.
"N-no, please don't kill me!" Issei manically grinned.
"Mercy? You want mercy? You don't want me to kill you when you tried to kill me?" Raynare tried to nod, but because she was being held up in the air by her hair, she couldn't move her neck. Raynare growled and launched a fist at Issei's face, watching as it connected with his nose. However, Issei laughed in response as it bounced off of him, finding Raynare's tenacity to be idiotically humorous in what could potentially be her final moments. "You're too prideful to properly beg for mercy, aren't you? All you can do is nod your head and move along, right?" Raynare grit her teeth.
"It's…it's not like that! Now let me down!" Issei's hair shadowed his eyes.
"You'll only be let down when you're dead."
Hi hi, me here. Thanks for the support on the first chapter, everyone! I hope I live up to your expectations. Talking about expectations, have I met them yet? I know a lot of you have followed this story because Issei is omnipotent and 'god-like' (which he is), but I want to know if you also enjoy my writing style. It's tough being a good writer, you know! When your story becomes popular, you think people expect great things from you so you start to question the quality of your writing.
Don't forget to leave reviews!
