Thanks for enjoying my series so far. This chapter has a few surprises thrown into it as well. Hope you enjoy. Please leave some reviews as well. As to Otonashi's strange personality, there is a reason for this. It will be explained in a later chapter.

Chapter 3

Okazaki was standing at a small bridge at the very back of the designated mission zone. He was given the location since it would be "easy" for a newbie like himself.

He held up the handgun that Ellie had given him.

"What did she call this thing again?" he asked himself. "A Glock wasn't it? Something like that."

Okazaki thought back to an hour ago when Ellie explained their mission…

"Since we have a newbie," Ellie said, "we'll be doing Operation Tornado."

Cory smiled and said, "Sounds like fun." Okazaki could tell that he enjoyed these "missions" very much. Almost as if he lived for them and nothing else. Like they were the only things that kept him here.

"It is out simplest mission so you should not have to worry about anything complicated or extremely difficult. But it tends to be quite high octane if the situation were to arise that Angel was to show his face," stated Gale. He didn't seem please for some reason.

Ellie walked up to him holding something in her right hand. It was a gun.

"Holy crap," sighed Okazaki as she walked right to him. "Where the hell do you guys get all these freaking guns? If there some sorta Afterlife black market?"

She laughed at that. "More or less. In this world, you can make anything out of dirt as long as you know how to make it and how to make it work. So we got some guys making them for us."

Okazaki just stared at her. He was more than a bit skeptical on whether or not that was the truth. "Isn't that just a bit too convenient"

"Get used to it," she told him. "Now, I'm gonna give you a small time location on this mission. Somewhere you can be useful yet not get in the way of the guys who can really pull their own weight.

Damn, this girl's blunt.

"Talk to Gale for your exact location," she said.

Gale grunted.

"So that is why you seem to be in a crappy mood," Okazaki said to Gale while chuckling. Gale just pushed up his glasses, grunted, and crossed his arms, though he said nothing in reply.

Ellie handed Okazaki the handgun and told him, "This is called a Glock 19 Generation 4. Just point and shoot, okay? If we hear you shoot, we'll come running and give you back up."

"Yeah, whatever." Okazaki felt that he had just been drafted into the military and is being thrown into combat without an ounce of training. Then again, that is what is happening, isn't it?

"So what are we gonna be doing on this so called 'mission?" asked Okazaki. He was still quite skeptical about all this, but was gonna go along with it in hopes that he'll be able to get some answers.

"Nothing big," she said. "Just lifting the students' meal tickets."

He couldn't believe his ears. He was completely surprised, yet at the same time he wasn't, that they were going to do something as petty as stealing meal tickets from the other students. He thought they were some sort of "Battlefront" as they called themselves, or at least a somewhat respectable group, not a bunch of thieves.

"Tsu-chan!" Ellie yelled.

"What?"

"Get GirlDeMo and get ready."

"Yes ma'am! We'll blow the entire school away. They won't know what hit 'em. You wont have to worry at all. Well, about us at least. Those dumbasses are a totally different story."

Okazaki, Cory, Gale, and Carter all threw dirty looks at Tsubaki but she just stuck her tongue out at them and ran out the door, probably headed for this GirlDeMo group.

"Okay everyone," Ellie announced. "Operation start!"

This leaves us where we were earlier.

Okazaki was sitting on the railing of the bridge waiting for something, anything, to happen.

"Damn," he said to himself. "I didn't get to ask what that GirlDeMo thing was." He stared down at his shoes. He was bored out of his mind. It reminded him from before me met Nagisa.

His thoughts drifted back to when he was still alive. When he lived his completely meaningless life.

He thought of when he first met Nagisa. She was standing at the bottom of the hill, scared to go up it to the school. She was talking to herself, saying how much she loved the school but everything had changed.

She seemed so miserable back then, but no matter what happened she never gave up. She kept on living. She was happy just being alive, even if her only friends were her parents.

But she made new friends. Kyou, Fujibayashi, Sunohara, Tomoyo, Kotomi, and even Fuko.

Okazaki jumped. That name came up again. The name of a person that he had never met before. Who was this person, he thought to himself. He had a feeling that she was a very important person to him, even though he was sure he has never met someone by that name.

All of a sudden, incredibly loud music started to play from the cafeteria. Rock music to be exact. Sounded alternative. The lyrics started and Otonashi nearly fell off the railing. It was obviously Tsubaki's voice. He couldn't believe it. It was the psycho, Tsubaki singing with such an amazing voice. It was almost unthinkable.

So, he thought, I guess that means that GirlDeMo is the name of a band. And from how everyone made it sound, it was some sort of distraction.

He balanced himself back on the railing listening to the music with a newfound respect for Tsubaki.

The music drew him in and calmed him down. The music may have a an intense, powerful sound to it, but the lyrics could both calm or energize a person depending on their mood.

"Ah. Crow Song. Brings back so many wonderful memories. She's good but she ain't nothing like Iwasawa-san was."

He fell off the railing is surprise and came back up right away after seeing the person. He was already aiming the handgun at the boy.

It was Otonashi. The Second Angel.

"When they hell did you get here?" Okazaki asked him.

"I don't know what you mean. I have been here the entire time listening to some very nostalgic music while you were lost in your own thoughts."

Ellie's words came back to him.

"Otonashi is the Second Angel," she had told him. "He replaced the original Angel after the First Generation defeated it. The entire First Generation had suddenly disappeared along with the First Angel. By the time we had arrived here, Otonashi had already replaced the original. Apparently, he follows mostly all the same methods as the original. Like how you got shot. You asked him to prove you couldn't die and to him, that is like asking him to show you where the bathroom is. And this is all from the conclusion we have drawn from what little information we have on the subject of the First Generation Battlefront and the First Angel. But there are probably some flaws due to lack of information."

"What the hell do you mean by nostalgic?" Otonashi yelled. "You replaced the First Angel didn't you? So you shouldn't know anything about GirlDeMo!"

Otonashi laughed. He looked to be enjoying this little exchange. "How do you know if their information is correct or not? Maybe they have drawn the wrong conclusion due to misinformation and lack of information."

"B-but… But they…" Okazaki couldn't counter back. What he said made so much sense, almost saying exactly what Ellie had told him at the end of her "Otonashi is an enemy" speech. It actually made him second guess the Battlefront.

"The current Battlefront knows almost nothing about the original. They are drawing their own incorrect conclusions out of horrible lack of correct information and a surplus of completely redundant information which was all they have been able to currently gather. The old Battlefront died too quickly to leave any relevant information for this generation. With what you have now, this generation will never understand the original."

Okazaki didn't know why, but Otonashi seemed knew a lot about the First Generation. Almost as if he was part of the First Generation.

As if he was part of the First Generation.

Part of the First Generation.

Okazaki's eyes widened at the thought. Could that be the case? he thought. Could Otonashi actually be part of the First Generation? He began to remember another thing that Ellie had told him.

"It is believed," she mentioned before, "that there is one member from the First Generation still here, but we have yet to find any evidence to support that."

"I recommend that you take caution about the information you are given from your Battlefront friends. I will never diss the battlefront but that doesn't mean it can't fall into disrepair. So be careful. I don't want you to fight for incorrect convictions. I don't want you to end up hurting her."

Otonashi got back up and started walking back the way he came.

"Wait!" Okazaki yelled at the retreating Otonashi. "Wait you bastard, tell me more! What do you mean, damnit? Who is 'her? And why should I be careful?"

Otonashi just kept on walking.

"You son of a bitch!" Okazaki pointed his gun at Otonashi and pulled the trigger releasing a warning shot.

But.

He got lucky.

Or should I say, he got...

Unlucky. Very unlucky.

The bullet just happened to bury itself into the back of Otonashi's neck.

He stopped in his tracks.

Okazaki froze. He didn't mean to hit him. He just wanted to get the guy's attention. Shit, he's gonna be totally pissed!

Otonashi sighed and turned around.

"Y'know," he said. "I had planned on giving you guys a bit of slack today, but I guess I should teach you people a little lesson in group punishment. Something I picked up from Yuri."

"Hand Sonic, Version 6," Otonashi said to himself.

After he said that, Otonashi took out two, repeat two, massive blades. More like swords. Each one was the length of his arm. Not only that, he pulled them put of thin air. Out of absolute nothingness.

"How the hell did you do that?" Okazaki screamed.

Otonashi replied only with the phrase, "Angel Player."

Okazaki was shocked. He didn't know what this Angel Player was, and right now, he didn't care. His shock turned to fear and he was then on the run. He stopped periodically to fire shots at Otonashi who was just casually walking forward.

But none of his shots landed.

Each time one even got close, Otonashi would just swat it away with his blades as if it were a fly.

Okazaki kept on running, sweat pouring down his face, his vision fading. He was even running out of adrenaline. He was slowing and just about to collapse with Otonashi standing over him when another gunshot rang out.

Otonashi quickly averted himself to avoid the near perfect shot and Okazaki used the distraction to escape.

He looked at the direction that the shot had come from and saw Ellie, the others, and a large number of other people who Okazaki assumed were other members he had yet to meet.

He turned and ran to meet up with them. Just as he arrived, though, Cory walked up and punched Okazaki straight in the nose sending him into the air, back a few feet and hitting the ground with a bone crushing thud.

Clutching his nose, Okazaki yells at Cory, "What the hell was that for?"

Cory came and picked Okazaki up by the collar and growled in his face, "What the hell did you do?"

"What do you mean?" Okazaki yelled in reply.

Carter dragged the two of them behind a wall with everyone else, and with a calmer disposition, told him, "Angel has only ever pulled out Hand Sonic Version 6 once." Carter also seemed quite distressed. "We tried to do a war of attrition. Angel got tired of the constant fighting and pulled out a weapon we had never seen before. That was Hand Sonic Version 6."

Ellie continued for him, "It was a massacre." Even her, of all people, seemed scared. "He tore through our forces like a hot knife through butter. A force of almost three-hundred. Completely wiped out in a matter of seconds." Ellie's whole body was shaking. "Our corpses were littered everywhere. Hand Sonic Version 6 has unimaginable power. Over ninety percent of our forces left and started acting like model students after that! What did you do that would make him pull that out?"

Okazaki was horrified. He never would have imagined that Otonashi could have been so dangerous. Such horrific power placed onto the shoulders of a single person.

"Why would a person like Otonashi have such terrible power?" he asked them.

"Because he isn't a person!" yelled Cory. "He's a bloody Angel! Angel of Death in my opinion."

For some reason, Okazaki didn't believe that Otonashi was actually an Angel.

"All I did was shoot him!" Okazaki yelled. "I swear. There was some… weird stuff that happened before that, but nothing that should have set him off like this! I swear I'm telling the truth!"

Cory yelled at him again, spitting as he screamed, "What weird stuff?"

Just as he finished saying that, a massive explosion went off a little ways a way, but the force of it was still strong enough to blow them off their feet and send them all flying backwards.

"This is no time to be arguing!" Ellie ordered. "Right now, we need to prioritize fighting Angel! We'll talk about this later! Now! Everyone to combat positions! Gale!"

"Yes?"

"Get on the horn and call everyone."

"Everyone, ma'am?" he stammered a little at this.

"Everyone. And tell them, the Second Angel is coming at strength level 6."

"Yes ma'am!"

"Everyone, move it now! Do not get caught standing still! Spread out and keep your distance from each other to minimize casualties! Go! Now!"

As soon as she dismissed everyone, they all took off based on their own discretions.

But it was still a massacre.

Just as one of the people that Ellie had brought with her left cover, one of the massive blades Otonashi had been wielding, flew by a pretty much light speed. You couldn't see it and it caught the poor guy by the neck and pinned him to one of the buildings behind us.

Otonashi's other blade became a handgun with some type of explosive round. He always hit his mark and he sent person after person flying back in explosive fire. Sometimes buildings and the ground were shot to cause maximum damage to anyone caught too close together or behind cover.

Okazaki just stood there from his cover and watched the hell unfold. More and more members of the Battlefront flooded in from all different locations. On top of buildings, through alleyways, every place you could think of on a boarding school campus.

But they were wiped out before they could do anything.

Just then, Otonashi started to raise his arms.

"Hey, Ellie!" Okazaki yelled. "What the hell is he doing? He's raising his arms."

Ellie jumped, with a terrified look on her face, as if what Okazaki had just said was the equivalent of the world ending. She ran and peaked around the corner. Her face had a look of indescribable fear.

She sprinted over to the radio and took it right out of Gale's hands. She called the GirlDeMo group first. "Tsubaki! Quit the show now! Get everyone out of there! Retreat. Angel is using Meteorite Strike! Repeat! Retreat!"

She then started contacting all channels yelling similar messages to each one.

Then it happened.

The largest explosion that Okazaki had ever seen, whether in a movie or otherwise, happened incredibly close to their proximity. The force tears apart every building in the vicinity and sends them and all the bodies around them in every direction.

Okazaki hit the wall but still remained conscious.

He looked over to Otonashi who appeared to be starting another one of these "Meteorite Strikes" when he heard a voice.

The voice screamed, "Yuzuru, stop it!"

The voice was a high, squeaky voice. One that seemed so familiar to him. He looked over at the person who had this familiar voice.

It was a short girl. With long dark, gray hair. She looked more like a middle schooler than anything else. But this girl looked so familiar to Okazaki.

Then a name rang in his head.

Fuko.

The name rang over and over. His head started to split. Horrible spasms of pain. His eyes, ears, nose, and mouth all started to bleed. He started vomiting, as well.

But during this, something else was also happening.

Memories flooded into his mind.

Memories of a happy time. A great time where all were happy. Of a mysterious girl that no one knew anything about. A mysterious girl who turned out to be something more than just human. It was this girl. The girl that was yelling for Otonashi to stop the Meteorite Strike.

Fuko.

Fuko. Ibuki.

Just as the girl looks over to him and smiles, Okazaki loses consciousness.