Re: Rigel Starting From Zero

by Cloud Link Zero

A 16 year old Natsuki Rigel comes home from his first mission with Halibel to find Banan burned to the ground and his family dead at the hand of the Witch's Cult. Striking a deal with Satella herself, he is flung to the past to try and prevent his father from going down the wrong path. Can he accomplish that goal without losing his own mind first? Rated M for Re:Zero Deaths

2. Life : Death

Re: Rigel Starting From Zero

Chapter 2

Life : Death

Seeing the blue sky around him after experiencing death in an impoverished tavern mere moments before, Rigel had to wonder if he was truly stuck in a special place in hell. Though with his heart beating, his lungs taking in air, he knew that he was alive...he just didn't realize what a deal with a Witch had truly entailed until this very moment.

'Your heart shall never die. Your soul will become tethered to another. If one should perish, so shall the other but neither shall ever experience true, eternal death. For each time one of you dies, you will Return.' That was what she had told him when she had sent him back. He thought it was all flowery words and empty meaning at the time but she had spoken the truth.

He could never die so long as his father lived. If one died, so to would the other. She had cursed them to be tied together in the most diabolical of ways in denying the both of them the comfort death brought to someone with the finality of their end. Which meant that he would have to step things up from here on in and actually protect his father from whatever would be coming for his life.

Then, that realization finally sunk in. He had DIED, miserably and alone. On top of that, he was subsequently brought back from its embrace without any sort of warning or fanfare. He just...fell flat on his side and found himself once more looking up at the sky when the rush of adrenaline faded from his body. He had to repress the urge to vomit as a noxious odor filled his nostrils for a brief moment. It smelled like death itself, the witches curse which clung to him like an obsessive lover.

It took a few minutes for him to regain his composure, but he finally managed it as he found his head filled with all sorts of questions that he needed to answer but didn't know where to start with, at first. At the very least, he was able to accept his death. Throughout his time as a child and teenager, the concept of enjoying life and just how important it was had been hammered into him repeatedly by his parents, but more specifically by his father.

If this was just a taste of what the man had gone through, Rigel was beginning to understand just why his father's mindset might have turned out the way it had become.

After calming down, the real question he had to ask himself was not in, 'just protecting father', but rather, 'how can I do it and not die in the process?'. He had just, after all, died himself doing just that, though he felt like smacking himself for making so many amateur mistakes like he had at that loot house. Halibel-sensei had taught him much, much better than what he actually showed in that single moment of battle. Seeing as now he had time to rectify on his mistakes, he thought back to what he found himself running into and what he could do better.

After all, once you have been marked by a killer, then one shall never truly be rid of them until one or the other dies, irregardless of that death being undone.

Taking in a deep breath, he pushed himself up and placed himself in a meditative position with his feet tapping each other in a perfect semi circle. His arms were tucked into his chest and his thumb and index finger curled into touching one another while the other three stood straight up. After counting to ten, he let out both his breath and all unnecessary thoughts that plagued his mind at the moment. They were nothing more than a distraction and he did not need them.

'Might as well rip the bandage off first. I let her completely dictate everything about that one slash. I got distracted by trying to get my idiot coward of a father to move, I was arrogant in thinking that Zarestia would bail me out when Satella had even told me that I only would keep her light orb but like a dumbass I forgot and I didn't even try to estimate her strength.' He thought to himself, getting the biggest errors out of the way first.

Taking in another deep breath, he slowly counted backwards from ten to let it out and shifted the focus of his thoughts to other aspects of the admittedly far too quick fight.

'That blade of hers, it was slightly curved on two parts at the central portion of it but it was also on the heavier side. Kararagi blades are completely curved to make up for the lack of iron and steel reserves in order to increase the cutting power. The heavier blade she has is to make sure she can chop the enemy to pieces or to break a stalemate if she's clashing with another weapon. My kunai was from a master forge smithy, it wouldn't break so easily in just one encounter unless she had a super heavy blade and superhuman strength to overcome the steel.' While he had only managed to get a glimpse of her weapon, his still fresh memory allowed him to analyze and focus on the particulars of it to break down logically what it could have been.

A third large breath was taken in and then slowly released as he tried to focus on his opponent in particular this time around with his heavy focus.

'That woman...despite her extremely revealing and distracting outfit, it was made of a heavier fur-like material. It was meant to keep her body warm despite the exposure to colder environments. A female assassin, enchanted blades and clothing meant to keep her warm in freezing conditions...Halibel-sensei told me about famous assassins from other countries and she matches up to what he had informed me, especially her obsession with cutting my father and I's stomachs wide open. Elsa, the Bowel Hunter from Gusteko. Shit...she's way above my experience level…'

Rigel was not an arrogant or overconfident person. He knew he only just qualified to be an official, proper shinobi for Kararagi so he had no actual prior experience fighting against other assassins. While he was personally trained by 'The Admirer' himself and learned his fighting style and techniques, it was just that; Training. If he had Zarestia with him still then the results would be heavily skewed in his favor.

It would be hard, if not impossible to go against a Spirit User with such a powerful spirit at their command and Zarestia herself ranked near the top when it came to the most powerful of such spirits, even with her literal power cut into a fourth of what it had once been centuries earlier.

If he wanted to win this fight and save his father, he would have to embrace everything that Halibel had taught him. He had to fight dirty, fight without mercy and fight like his life was on the line regardless of who he was fighting while staying in the shadows. That was the way of a Kararagi shinobi and he could only hope that he managed to get himself onto that level of strength.

With that assessment out of the way, Rigel did a spot check of his own body and was surprised to see that the clothing that had been ripped and torn by Elsa's blade, was once again perfectly pristine. Though he would have to make sure that he invested in some proper chainmail to go under his clothing. It would be slightly cumbersome and make him a little heavier, but the extra layer of protection would help quite a bit when fighting someone like Elsa. One second was all anyone needed to change the outcome of a fight, more so when the two fighters were both in the assassination business.

The broken kunai was also restored to its original shape and sharpness. There had been no sign of weakness or breakage on it at all. It was convenient that when he was revived it would be when he was at the peak of health...hopefully. The fact that he still had to die in the first place was a huge demerit, however, while also a large drain on him mentally and emotionally.

Human beings, be they full humans or demi-humans like himself, were not meant to take such a thing as death so lightly. It was why in every nation, in every culture, the death of something was taken with the utmost seriousness. It didn't matter if that death came through battle, war or bad choices, when someone died others would bear the consequences for continuing on without that person by their side.

With everything as sorted out as he could get it to be, he rose from his meditative stance and looked down, already knowing that at this point his father would have already left. Thankfully he had a good enough memory to remember where he went and had a decent enough sense of time to know that he had been out of it for about a good fifteen minutes in doing his meditation. Shaking off any numbness from his limbs, he set about down the path to where he had recalled his father had gone to.

Alleyway

Rigel felt a twitch slowly come to his eye. His father wasn't in the area that he was in the last time he had followed him. In fact, the three thugs were more or less gone as well with one nursing an injured wrist. This meant, however, that he had absolutely no real idea where the other was.

As he dragged a hand down his face slowly, he closed his eyes, let out a repressed breath he had been keeping in and tried to assess the situation calmly.

'Alright. Apparently my father is an emotional idiot and cannot seem to at least follow his own footsteps in the right order. If I was as stupid as he is, where would I go?' He thought to himself.

There were two reasonable things that his father could have done at this point which he could follow.

'First...he could've tried to find that woman. The one that he said he was going to save. A silver haired half-elf with a spirit floating around her wouldn't be very hard to miss in this place so he'd stumble across her sooner rather than later.' To him, it was the more probable chance of the two.

'The other option is to confirm that he had truly died in the first place. Which means going back to the place where he died. I wasn't paying too much attention to the conversation he had with the half-elf, but there was something there that they were looking for.' That was certainly the more dangerous of the two options, considering neither of them actually knew when the assassin would have arrived at that loot house.

Rather than work his mind in circles and hesitate, he decided that he would leave where he went to luck. The last thing Rigel wanted to do was waste time chasing a dead end and his father dying without him there to at least try and save him. So he fished out a Kararagi gold coin from one of his many hidden pockets and flicked it up into the air.

'Heads, I chase the half-elf. Tails, I go to the loot house.' He had thought as the coin continued to flip in the air before gravity reasserted its hold on it.

As the coin was about to fall into his hand, the world suddenly stopped.

It became devoid of color, his senses became dull and unfocused, but his eyes could still see perfectly. So much so that the silver eyes of Satella were staring right back at him from the black fog that she was enshrouded in. Yet he couldn't even say a single world, as he had no control over his own body at that moment.

With nary a sound, the Witch of Envy carefully and delicately picked the coin out of its frozen place and held it in front of Rigel's eyes.

'Tails' He noted as it was kept between long, delicate fingers.

It was supremely creepy in his head that the Witch watching over him had a built in sense for his father apparently. If she was interfering with something as simple as this, that must have meant that she either knew that the coin would have come up as heads, or she didn't want him wasting time and just pointed him in the right direction.

Regardless, she let her arm fall down, never once letting her eyes stray from his own before she suddenly vanished as if she had never been there in the first place.

The authorities of the world came back into existence and Rigel could once again move, breathe and feel. Which came with the drawback of his nose scrunching up as the scent of the miasma once more filled the air around him.

Not to mention that his coin was still gone.

"Didn't take her for a thief, or maybe it was equivalent exchange…" he muttered to himself. Yet...what would a Witch even want with a gold coin anyways? More so if she's far and away from Kararagi?

Either way, he had his answer and it was easy enough to take a more direct route from the rooftops to the poor parts of the city that he was in. All he had to do was follow the trail to the more sparsely populated and smelly places to which the scent of death clung heavy. Shaking any stiff feelings out of his limbs, he began a dead sprint and then leapt forward to the nearest rooftop and continued on from there.

'It's pretty early into the day, around noon at best. At the very least, this is a good indicator of what time I would need to be there to avoid Elsa getting the drop on father and I.' He thought idly as he began to jump in different various ways.

One roof had him landing on the toes of one foot and using the momentum to flip forward, grab the spiral like tip of the roof meant to let rain slant off of it, swing himself in circles to build up even more momentum and then released his grip to jump two more roofs ahead before landing in a roll and jumping once more when he reached the apex of said roll.

Some might say he was taking his time, fooling around or being childish by doing such things, but in reality he needed the escape through the adrenaline of such high risk maneuvers. If his mind idled too long, he might go back towards thinking about the first fight and his...death. A light grimace came to his lips as just a solitary flash of being on the wooden floor came to mind and nearly caused him to lose his footing.

He managed to reorient himself easily enough and got back to jumping across the roofs. 'You have to push it out of mind. There is nothing else you can do. It happened...move on.' It was a commanding thought, but such things were far easier said than done.

'Loot House'

Afternoon

The sun was beginning to arch past its apex position, signaling that it was getting into the late afternoon. Rigel approached the loot house cautiously this time around and made all of his footsteps and actions silent. He combed across the place while avoiding passing by the windows to not be seen. Instead, he ducked under them and carefully tested each and every windowsill to see if there was any give to it.

There was no reason to do this at the front or from the side windows facing the front as that would be a failure upon entry. He didn't have a divine blessing to erase his presence from an area so he had to be as stealthy as he could be. So instead he had been checking all the back windows. Much to his good fortune, he managed to find one that he could pry open.

Some might think it would be wiser to do it slowly, inch by inch, in case the owner could come by at any moment, but that was an inefficient waste of time. Rather, he just pulled it open all the way and if it made too much noise he could simply hide and the owner could mistake the actions as having left the window open. Thankfully, there was only a light thump to indicate that he got it open and he quickly rolled inside before keeping to the shadows. Despite the white little shuriken that his mother had stitched into his uniform, he blended into the darkness perfectly.

Testing the doorknob of what appeared to be a bedroom that he found himself in, there was no squeak or sound that it was rusted or in need of repair.

'How ironic that a thief keeps their own room the best in the house and makes it that much more unsafe if someone comes in the same way.' He thought to himself.

Quickly and quietly, he gently pried the door open and just slowly leaned his head out. Muted voices could be heard speaking down the hallway that he found himself looking at. He sidled himself out of the room and closed it behind him before putting all of his weight on his toes to prevent any squeaking floorboards from giving him away as he tip-toed to the end of the hall.

"That metia is worth…" came the rumbling voice of a man who cast a large shadow that took up much of the room that he was near.

"We will wait…" he heard a second voice this time, young and female.

"I…" the hesitant voice matched his father perfectly.

It took a large chunk of Rigel's self-control to not sigh and slap a hand against his face.

'I swear, if I didn't know my dad, I'd think he WANTED to rush towards his death a second time around.' He thought as he flicked his wrists. Two kunai appeared in his hands immediately after and looking up to the room at large, he found an appropriate hiding place above all of their heads as the building itself had multiple ceiling rafters to keep it stable.

Leaping up several feet easily, he used his kunai to dig into the wooden wall horizontally and then, using them to keep his feet steady, he leapt into the rafters with perfect precision, the only indication he had been in the room was one shadow seeming heavier than the rest as he moved.

Once he was settled in and feeling confident the rafter would hold his weight, Rigel clenched his fists. The glint of steel wire was momentarily seen against the light of the lamps that lit the loot house, but it was not at an angle that the occupants could see. The kunai that had been embedded into the wall shook and then were pulled back into his uniform via a hidden sleeve.

Now it was time to play the waiting game...or so he thought. Not long after settling into his perch, the door opened and in came Elsa. Smiling, not a care in the world on her face and already figuring out that she could kill everyone in the room...that she could see. Even with the Light Orb and Reiken on his person, he lowered his killing intent to negligent levels that could be easily overlapped by the largest person in the room that Rigel could tell was a demi-human just from size alone.

The fence probably was a giant if the upper body meant anything. There was a shrewd, almost cunning look in his eye which said told Rigel that he had been alive for a very long time. That meant that he was either very lucky, very smart or very powerful. Though considering that they were in the poor part of a castle town and that the giant was a fence, along with Lugunicia's frosty attitude towards demi-humans in general, he'd bet on the former. Especially since his weapon, a giant club, was in plain sight of everyone there.

His companion was the thief that he had passed by in the previous...loop? Life? He wasn't sure what to really call it. Regardless, she was small in stature and in various other ways, but he could see with his eyes how the wind and air in that house seemed to protectively coil around her, indicating a blessing of some sort. She had two knives on either side of her waist and she knew how to use them since one hand was consistently on one of them or ready to pull one out. Her clothing was minimalist and meant to do enough to keep her light on her feet but the scarf could at least conceal some of her identity if spotted.

His father was...well...his father. Same weird clothes, no sense of danger or life preservation and apparently having some awareness of just how bad the situation was since his eyes immediately widened in recognition upon seeing Elsa enter the room. It was a very sudden and jarring change since his dad's body language instantly changed to fearful, defensive and wanting to be anywhere but that room at that moment, but staying out of obligation for whatever reason he had for being there.

'So, in order to beat Elsa here, I would have to arrive around...four to five in the afternoon…' Rigel kept that note in his head. He did not expect this fight to be easy and he fully expected that he might end up dying again. At the very least...at the very least, however…

He wanted to make a difference this time.

That was why he was patient, biding his time and watching over them like a guardian bird...or maybe a predatory cat looking for a meal.

Mercifully the wait was not that long either. His dad's low self-preservation skills kicked in when he said that with the trade of his metia for the trinket that the thief had stolen from the half-elf would end up having the trinket go back to said half-elf, negotiations had broken down pretty quickly from there.

The very second that she had reached for the kukri at her hips, Rigel struck. Twisting his wrist at an angle, he activated another one of his many hidden pockets and from it, a kunai with rope attached to the ring end of the handle flew out at high speeds. He had waited for Elsa to be completely distracted in the thought of killing easy prey to do this and his weapon had sailed perfectly between the giant and his father.

Only for Elsa to look directly at him at the last second and simple move her neck just a tad to the side and have his attack miss...or so she thought. With a grin hidden by his face covering, Rigel moved his fingers into a crossing motion right over the rope itself with his index finger going under his middle finger. Something that most joints couldn't do, but his flexibility training allowed him to pull it off, albeit with some pain involved, but it was temporary.

The result was as if an act of the dragon god itself had willed it; The trajectory of his rope dart kunai completely shifted in the same direction as to where Elsa moved her neck. Then he pressed the crossed fingers down and the kunai once again shifted in direction to have the rope wrap itself around her throat before he yanked on the makeshift noose to drag her up.

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. His father, the giant and the girl had all yelled out in various ways and tried to prepare their defenses, pathetic as each of their guards was, only to have the assassin suddenly be yanked into the air with a weapon tied around her neck like a noose.

Elsa had attempted to free herself while she was being hoisted up by grabbing the kukri as if this was nothing more than an annoyance, but Rigel had leapt down from his perch, the rope traveling with him and forcing her body to shift directions so she had missed the initial grab before he had her hung from the rafters.

At this point, he knew that the giant and thief had their weapons pointed at him, so he decided to make himself a non-threat to them as he cleared his throat. Considering that his voice was almost exactly like his dads to a perfect pitch, he carefully lowered it a few octaves to make himself sound older than he was.

"Elsa Granhiert, the Bowel Hunter. You've been quite a difficult target to track down." He said, coming up with a cover story on the spot.

Despite being hung from the rafter at an angle that would have snapped a normal humans throat, Elsa did not show any signs of pain or fear of losing oxygen, or dying for that matter. Rather, she had a bemused smile on her face while she let herself be hung by his weapon.

"By that style of outfit I can tell that you're Kararagi. I can't seem to recall any targets from there recently that would have them send one of you after me." She said, albeit strained from the lack of oxygen going into her throat.

She was completely still as moving would only have the blade of his kunai, currently pressed against and partially into her throat, dig deeper into it. If she had fought back, it would have sliced her throat in two and she would've died from the shock and blood loss...if she was anything close to a normal human.

That was why Rigel was calmly analyzing her movements, knowing that she was buying herself time to break free.

"It's an...overall thing, rather than individuals. Merchants are people that not many wish to upset, much less an entire nation full of them. Not even the nobility." He explained as he tugged a little tighter on the rope to have his kunai getting her to bleed.

"O-o-oi! What the hell are you doing?!" A voice chimed into their conversation.

He didn't even have to glance back to know that was his father shouting and probably wondering if he was about to be party to a possible execution.

"Saving all three of your ungrateful asses, for free. Elsa here isn't known for leaving a deal without a trail of bodies to go with it. She was just going to gut all of you and go her merry way with whatever the hell she wanted." Rigel said loudly and clearly to all three of them, seeing as how he could hear knives being unsheathed from his right and the giant slowly moving to the left to grab his club.

"Oh? You really did do your homework didn't you? Then again, I do make it rather obvious when I've...cut into a deal. Both figurative and literally." Elsa said with almost a delighted purr in her voice despite her face turning a shade of blue to signify her windpipe getting cut off harshly.

"Just die already, bitch." Rigel growled as he closed and opened his free hand twice. In-between the gap of his fingers, several shuriken appeared in them seemingly out of thin air.

Elsa couldn't respond at this point, but the grin that was still on her face said everything before she gently, but with force behind the motion, forced her body upward so that her legs were wrapped around the rafter.

This had the unintended side effect of her dress falling down to gravity, giving everyone in the room a privy look to the black lingerie that she wore...alongside a multitude of very sharp, very dangerous kukri strapped to her thighs.

Rigel immediately threw his shuriken as she had moved, but by then it was too late. Being a more experienced assassin, she easily avoided the projectiles and swiftly cut herself free. Yet despite landing on the ground with a cat-like grace, she still had the majority of the noose and kunai stuck at her throat.

'FUCK! Even when I was keeping tabs on her body language she still pulled that shit off!' He thought in annoyance as his attack missed.

With an almost careless ease, she yanked the kunai out, looking at the blood on it and then bringing it up to her mouth, licking it with a carnal look on her face as it turned back to its normal shade of color eerily quickly.

"Oh I think I'm going to keep this one. It's been quite awhile since someone got the upper hand on me like this." She told Rigel before tucking the bloody kunai into her cleavage.

'I know I thought I was jealous of dad attracting women with no effort, but I don't want this kind of attention from a woman. She is screaming 'Bad Touch' all over.' He dryly noted as he flicked his wrist to pull out another kunai.

At this point, the other people in the room could no longer ignore the situation of a murderer in their midst that was after their own blood as well. The giant had lifted up his club and looked to smash Elsa into a pulp with one giant swing.

"No, you idiot! That's what she wants!" Rigel had attempted to shout in warning as he ran up to Elsa with his kunai, but she had easily blocked him with a kukri in one hand and dodged the swing with an almost careless ease before striking out with the second kukri in the other.

The slice was so fast that it was nearly invisible except to those with a trained eye. The giant blinked, looking confused for a moment before a horizontal red line appeared across his gut and blood began to spill out of it moments before his organs began to slip out.

He was dead before he had even hit the floor.

Rigel gave a small 'tsk!' in disappointment that he couldn't prevent the giants death as Elsa put all of her attention onto him next.

"Oh I do hope you put up more of a fight than he did." She requested before lashing out like a snake, going for a stab to his gut.

He blocked by leaning his body back at an almost perfect ninety degree angle before lashing out with a snap kick from his position, placing his hands on the floor to shift his center of gravity so he wouldn't fall like a novice.

The tips of his toes lashed out against Elsa's chin, but she had raised it up so that it was more of a grazing blow rather than a full on one. Rather than letting his body fall back down naturally, he pulled himself back into a roll of leg over head as he heard the sound of blades smashing against wood from where he had stood just moments before.

Pushing himself into the air, he flicked both of his wrists several times as he somersaulted, filling all of the gaps in his hands with kunai that had wires attached to the handle, thin yet strong enough that not even fully grown beast men could hope to snap it.

As he locked eyes with Elsa, she gave him a bemused look as she leapt after him, only to find herself needing to block and deflect the ten kunai he had thrown at her. This allowed him to touch down unharmed while clenching his fists together and yanking them back.

Every kunai that the Bowel Hunter had deflected shook in place for a moment before seemingly reversing time and heading straight back to the user of them in the quickest route from point A to point B, of which Elsa was right in-between.

He didn't know if she had eyes in the back of her head or just heard the shuffling of the weapons as they pulled themselves out of the wood, but she turned around and did a quick horizontal strike to once again force the kunai away from her. Some of them were deflected in a way that would have turned Rigel himself into a pincushion.

"Nothing for it then. You two, RUN!" He ordered as he twitched his fingers to have his deflected kunai carefully slink back into his sleeve. This time around, he reached into the back of his uniform. His fingers brushed up against not the Reiken, but rather an ordinary wakizashi, or short sword meant for stealth types like him.

His fathers legs seemed to catch up with his brain this time around and he attempted to get the thief to run with him, but Rigel could see that she was slowly becoming consumed by rage as she shrugged him off with an unnatural amount of strength in her wispy frame. There was no doubt that the reason was over the death of the giant who was probably a close friend of hers. She definitely screamed the 'orphan' type and the giant had probably been a guardian who was watching out for her while she lived and grew in the slums.

He turned his attention back to Elsa, who herself was turning around to deal with the other two quickly, but stopped that cold by him dashing forward and forcing her to focus on him with her kukri clashing and creating sparks against his wakizashi as they attempted to overpower one another. Though unlike his kunai, his wakizashi was made of sterner stuff and it wouldn't break nearly as easily.

"Ooohh...boys with their toys. At least you're more a man than the other one. I will so enjoy seeing your bowels and making a little doll after. I'll even keep it this time around." The older woman teased and crooned with a soft, melodious voice that did not match the actions of her actually beginning to overpower him without the use of his oni half.

"Fucking...blessings…" He muttered as his back was being pushed closer to the floor with every passing moment. He knew that she either had some sort of blessing to make her this strong, or a curse of some kind. He didn't know which, but damn if it wasn't annoying regardless as the sound of stomping feet caught both of their attention.

"YOU BITCH! YOU KILLED OLD MAN ROM AND NOW I'M GONNA KILL YOU!" The thief girl howled as she crossed the space between the bar and them in a single breath, her knives gleaming with an unusually sharp edge with the wind wrapping around it.

"Oh? A user with a blessing of the wind? How rare. A shame that it won't serve you any purpose here." Elsa said with a bored tone and a raised eyebrow.

The thief did a highly telegraphed leaping strike and Elsa had attempted to use one arm to keep him still to allow the other time to have her second kukri slice her in two.

With her attention divided, Rigel struck and used his own arm not tightly gripping the base of the wakizashi to lash out with the quickness of a snake and keep her still by grabbing the arm that tried to attack the girl. The older assassin had tried to counter this by snap kicking his leg with her pointed high heels, but he raised his own knee in response to have her foot smash into his knee guard which cushioned the blow heavily.

Yet even with that, he still winced with the amount of force that was placed behind it, but he smirked in victory when it allowed the thief to reach them, one of her wind blessed knives carving out a large gouge in Elsa's hip.

He then attempted to take advantage of her injury by pushing forward to make her go on the back foot and aggravate her wound even more, but that ever easygoing grin was still on her face. She still had something up her sleeve as the thief attempted to go for a killing strike over a debilitating one.

It was in that moment that Rigel discovered why she was truly one of the most dangerous assassins in the underworld. Despite having a large cut going into her hip, which should have already caused her to go into shock from the blood loss and pain, he saw her wound slowly closing itself up, piece by fleshy piece.

Then, with them still in a stalemate, she decided to break it by using their clashing legs as a foothold. Changing her attacking leg to instead hook onto the inside of his own, she used the 'platform' it brought her to twist her body around to attempt to slam her foot into his skull.

Rigel had to break off their mutual attack by letting go of her arm, leaning to the side and forcing her away from him, lest she crack his head open like an egg...but that was exactly what she wanted. Her body was now facing the thief, whose eyes widened when she saw the two kukri being prepared in Elsa's hands now that the other wasn't being held back.

Being so badly out of position, once more Rigel was powerless to stop her from making a scissor motion with her arms...decapitating the thief on the spot and making her head float in mid-air for a moment as the rest of her body crumpled to the ground and the head followed once gravity reasserted itself.

That was the breaking point for his father. Already seeing just how out of his depth he was he did the only sensible thing at that point. Which was turning around and quickly running out of the loot house as fast as his legs would allow, leaving Rigel alone with the other deadly assassin in the room.

"Well, you know how our business goes. No witnesses unless we're asked to make it messy." Elsa tittered as she waggled a bloody blade near him. His entire center of balance was off kilter with half of her body weight atop of him. He grunted as he forced his free hand to the ground and slapped it hard to give him the momentum to get the both of them up.

As she pushed herself off, Elsa's hand and nails raked themselves against his mask as her 'getting off of him' meant that she used her advantageous position to somersault off of his stomach, which allowed the low hanging hand to scratch through his face covering, leaving five bloody gashes across his cheek.

"Agh!" Rigel shouted in pain as the cuts burned way more than they should have before seeing something lightly glinting against her fingers. That was when his vision started to get blurry and his body became increasingly heavier and heavier with each second that passed by.

"P-poison." he spat out as he tried to keep Elsa in focus as she walked by him.

"Yes. Normally that would spell the end of most, but it's a paralytic agent. I want to keep you alive until I get back so I can open you up slowly." She admitted.

The wakizashi that had been in one hand the entire time fell out of his numbed grip, hitting the ground hilt first between the legs of a chair and the blade pointed outwards as it became stuck there.

"All will be over soon. It won't take me long to catch up to the escapee. See you soon, beloved bowels." Elsa crooned, slapping his bloodied cheek and sensually licking his blood off of it. He saw...or thought he saw, her shiver in what seemed to be erotic euphoria as she power walked out of the loot house.

'Damn...it…' He thought to himself, but even thinking became a chore as his entire world was starting to spiral and swirl out of control. He was a dead man and so was his father. The paralyzing poison Elsa used was strong and more importantly, fast acting. If it had been slower and not near instantaneous, he could have pulled out his oni horn and burned the poison out of himself.

Yet all he could do now was fall and wait for Elsa to return and he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of killing him a second time around.

Even with his vision darkening, he remembered the position of where his sword was and more importantly, where the blade was pointed. Suicide was often considered to be the cowards way out but Rigel thought it was more prudent that if he was going to die, then he was the one to decide how he was going out and not her.

With what little motor control and sheer force of will he had left, Rigel stumbled back by a few steps and then to the side before his entire body gave out on him. His final act was to flip himself over so that the tip of the blade was pointed right at the back of his neck.

Rigel Natsuki died for a second time, his sword severing the link between his spinal column and brain stem, along with going into and out of his neck from back to front. His death was painless and near instant, not even needing to go through anything else. If one were to pull down his mask, they would see that he died with a grin on his face for denying his enemy what she had truly wanted from him.

Lugunica Rooftop

Noon

Third Loop

With a heavy gasp, Rigel greedily filled his lungs up with much needed oxygen. A wet cough came from his mouth that forced him to pull down the lower facial portion of his mask before bile rose of his throat and coated the rooftop with stomach acid. The noxious scent of the witch's curse had become completely unbearable and forced him to vomit even when he didn't have any food in his stomach.

"Fucking hell...I didn't think she was dragon-be-damned immortal on top of self-healing…" he muttered as he gained back some semblance of control over his body again. Reaching up to his cheek, he pulled it back to see that there was no blood and undoubtedly if he looked in the mirror there would be no marks there as well.

He gnashed his teeth as Elsa had gotten the best of him thrice over. He had literally killed her in several different ways in that loot house, along with one from the thief, yet the most she treated it as was a slight distraction on the road she was walking on that didn't affect her in the least.

As he was letting his stomach settle and having the witch's scent being carried off into the wind, he decided to look down at the market square. This time he managed to catch a glimpse of his father, who had been looking and patting at his stomach like he was amazed that for the second time, he was miraculously unharmed.

'I guess I wasn't fast enough to stop Elsa from catching up, but I know I died first this time around, so whatever wound he was dying from didn't have the time to imprint that pain and fear on him.' He reasoned. It wasn't like he could personally claim how fast Elsa was compared to him, nor her tracking skills. He just knew, both off-hand and now personally, that she was very, VERY good at doing her job.

One would have to be good if they didn't feel much in the way of pain and couldn't die in any sort of conventional way after all. This meant that he would have to get...creative...in how he would attempt to kill Elsa to stop her from killing everyone else.

He would not have bothered with the girl or giant since he didn't know them at all, but his father was most definitely a bleeding heart kind of guy so he knew that one way or another, those two would have to be saved as well. This caused him to let out a sigh and pull off his mask so he could scratch the back of his head freely.

As his knuckles brushed against the sealed Reiken, it made him ponder if he should have used that over the wakizashi that he had used in the last cycle of life. He dismissed the notion as quickly as it came, since he knew that using it would have meant that everyone in that loot house would have most definitely died, but it would have been by his hand.

The price of using such a sword, especially one whose translation came out to 'spirit', often meant that the price was equal to the name and he'd rather not accidentally suck out the souls of innocent people to feed a cursed sword. Though it made a very morbid amount of sense when he had raided that temple with Harribel-sensei that all the monks inside looked as if they had gone utterly insane. They were probably the ones who could not resist the swords temptations and they were the ones who paid the price when they couldn't appease it.

As his father staggered away from what seemed to be an Appa salesman, he saw him enter, much earlier than normal, the side alley in which the thugs were contained in. That wasn't good as this meant that the half-elf would not be there to save him this time around and it would mess up the order of events all over again. 'I feel like I'm an over-glorified sitter'he had thought to himself as he took in a few deep breaths to calm down his roiling stomach.

Hurling out the acid bile from it earlier had made his abdominal muscles cramp up a bit, making it harder for him to prepare his body to jump from roof to roof when tensing up was impossible. So he gave himself a minute and touched the afflicted area with a green light coming from his hands along with a bit of water magic mixed into it.

He was as good as new in just under a minute. Not even his father could fuck something up in less time than that right? His father wasn't that much of an idiot...right?

So why was he getting such a bad feeling about leaving him in that alleyway for no more than two minutes, tops?

With a sinking feeling growing in his gut, Rigel quickly ran across the rooftops to where the alleyway would be located. When he leaned over to see what the situation was, he found his heart sinking deep into his stomach and his mind cursing the witch all that much more for the miasma that completely screws him over each time he re-awakens.

The three thieves were surrounding his father, who was laying in a pool of blood on the dirty ground, a knife wound stabbed near a vital area and most definitely fatal if not treated immediately. Though at that moment, Rigel could only see red from his eyes as he flicked his wrist and grabbed the kunai that came out from his sleeve.

Those thieves were no Elsa and he had both the high ground and the element of surprise as he silently jumped off the roof. The fat one died first as he landed behind him and sliced the mans neck open with no hesitation, no talking and no mercy. His tall companion barely had any time to let out a scream of surprise before Rigel leapt over to him and grabbed the thief's face with an open claw hold. The scream was silenced when he slammed that face into the brick wall of the house on the right side of the alley, hard enough to crack his skull wide open like an egg.

Their final companion, the shorty, just pissed his pants in absolute fear. This made him wrinkle his nose in disgust before taking the bloody kunai in his hand and tossing it with precision. It went straight through the shorty's forehead, dead center and went hilt deep into the brain. He died falling on his knees.

"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" He shouted in rage as he went to his father and pulled out the bloody knife before attempting to use a healing spell on him. "Come on, you'll be fine, just let the healing take effect…" he muttered as he focused solely on trying to make sure his father survived.

It was due to this that he was woefully unprepared when a voice cut into his thoughts.

"You there, halt! What is the meaning of this senseless violence?" It demanded.

Already annoyed as it was, Rigel grabbed his dying father up by the scruff of the back of his clothing while still treating the slowly closing wound and was prepared to run. It was just a regular knight...or so he assumed, anyways. Once he got to the rooftops, he could just get to a different part of the city in a few hours and fully give his attention to making sure his father didn't set a new record on dying.

"You will not get away with this, murderer!" The voice declared while the sound of a blade being pulled out reached his ears. Rigel just rolled his eyes and prepared to jump when the sound of howling winds had overtaken that of the steel being drawn.

He finally turned his head around to see the alarming sight of a large blade of wind just inches away from his face. It obscured the view of the knight, but he could see that the person had red hair and a frown set on their face, male by the low tone of their voice.

Unable to dodge or move in such a short time frame, Rigel and Subaru Natsuki both died for a third time from the blade of wind blasting both of them to the end of the alleyway and through the house at the end of it and the house behind that from the sheer strength and force of what had hit them.

Lugunica

?

Fourth Loop

Unlike the other times he had awoken, Rigel Natsuki found himself opening his eyes to an unwelcome yet familiar sight. Acrid smoke clogged the air and the black clouds obscured what should have been a nice noon sky. Fire, blood and death all came to his nose as he pushed himself up and saw that the castle city was in the process of becoming ruins around him.

"What in the name of the Dragon happened here?" He asked himself as he saw the entire place being pillaged. Knights were being overwhelmed left and right while trying to mount a bare minimum of a resistance together, but it seemed like they had been very disorganized. As he observed this, that scent came into his nose again. The scent of the witch clogged his nostrils, only this time it was not coming from him.

It was coming from literally all around him and in every direction. Which meant that the Witch Cult had started up one hell of an attack to take on the capital of Lugunica itself. Even more miraculous was that they had managed to push themselves this far into the market area of the city, which was located well within the borders and nowhere near any gates.

Having his senses be overwhelmed by so many things had him close his eyes and take a knee so he could try to reorient himself properly. Sometimes it really was a chore to have such strong senses since it was extremely easy to have that used against you when the other knew about it. As things currently stood, however, it seemed like he fell from death straight into nightmare fuel.

"What the fuck happened this time?" He whispered to himself as he tried to make heads and tails of how he went from several instances of normal days to a fallen kingdom. When he opened his eyes again, he found a pool of what almost looked like pitch black water underneath his feet. Jumping back slightly, he found himself looking at the shadow coated and ethereal form of Satella, with the same damning glowing eyes staring at him.

"I'm TRYING ok?!" he shouted, already hinting at what the Witch might be trying to tell him. "It's not my fault that I'm in a foreign land with no information and apparently going against two people that are both older and more skilled than me who could murder the both of us in our sleep! I don't have my...I don't have Zarestia and my father seems determined to dig himself into a constant grave despite me putting my own life on the line! What else do you fucking want?!"

When he was done screaming at the Witch with all that he had, he placed his hands on his knees and panted, gasping for air as she continued to just stare at him, menacingly, or at least that's how it felt when one couldn't even truly see the others eyes aside from two glowing orbs that represented them.

After another minute or two, she turned around and pointed downwards towards the square. Knowing that it was a signal for him to just look, he precariously inched his way forward and leaned over the rooftop to see what was going on. He felt his eyes go wider than he ever felt them go with what Satella was pointing at.

Down there, right where her finger was pointed, was his father...IN THE ROBES OF THE WITCH CULT.

That in and of itself seemed entirely incomprehensible to the teenage Half-Oni. His father and mother both hated and had a healthy fear and anger towards the Witch Cult. They would never, EVER join them. That was what had lead to their deaths in his own timeline.

SO WHY WAS HIS FATHER IN THEIR RANKS HERE AND NOW?

Considering that they had both been teleported to the same starting point, there was absolutely no way something like this could have happened in the bare seconds between their awakening after their deaths.

It took all of Rigel's willpower to not jump down there right now and demand an explanation out of him. With Satella right next to him, he doubted that she would allow it anyways. So with that option taken out, there was only one thing left he could try.

"WHAT. HAPPENED?" He gritted out through grinding teeth.

"Pride. Arrogance. Hubris. Not wanting to ask for help, he forced the two of you to endlessly repeat against Elsa, over and over and over again. In time, you couldn't take any more of being murdered for his selfishness and left him to his own devices. Subaru's arrogance lead him to the Witch Cult. There, he thrived and became their Archbishop of Pride." The Witch stated and went no further than that.

There was a ton of context missing in that explanation. Yet there was nothing he could currently do to try and force it out of her. The gist of all of it was easy enough to understand though. He had to get his father to ask others for help, rather than assuming it would just conveniently fall into his lap.

He could easily assume that was what happened in the alleyway in the loop previous. He expected Rigel himself or the half-elf to come to his rescue at just the right moment, but due to him going there far too early it just led to him being stabbed before help could arrive.

All of this left a very sour taste in his mouth and caused him to bite his lip. While he didn't bleed from it, yet, it was a close thing.

"I get it. I'll have him ask for help. Delay myself from arriving, but not so long that it would end up getting him killed. Will that do?" He asked the now silent companion standing next to him.

Turning her head to stare at him, she gave a small nod and waved her hand, engulfing the land around them in darkness that had him closing his eyes once more.

'I'm beginning to wonder if my own sanity will be left by the time all of this is over.' He thought to himself as he let her magic, or whatever she wanted to call the shadows, wash over him.

Lugunica

Rooftop, Noon

Fourth Loop

When he snapped his eyes open once more, Rigel found himself under a clear sky again. He heaved out a large sigh of relief at this, considering that he honestly really didn't want to be near a Witch Cult version of his father. It was just so twisted and wrong on so many levels for his psyche to try and begin to handle.

As much as he wanted to wipe that memory from his mind, much like the fall of his hometown, a part of him could still smell the bits of decay and fire left from what was a very, very clear warning. This was going to be his last chance to try and make sure that they survive Elsa, or else that burning future would be something that he would find etched to his memory in a far quicker and more frequent pace than he would like.

This left the question of just exactly HOW he could get the idiot that was his teenage father to not go into that alleyway too early.

Having already fought off the scent of the Witch, he wasn't debilitated enough to miss that his father was in front of the Appa salesman again. He looked extremely ill at this point and as much as he wished he could do something to help that, he had to stay in the shadows.

Never before had Kararagi seemed so much easier to operate in than now. Especially when on one end of his misadventures into Lugunica, he had an expert assassin and on the other there was apparently a freakishly strong red haired swordsman he had to be on the lookout for who could kill them almost as fast as they could react to something.

'Decisions, Decisions. Life and death. A witch that will never leave me alone…'

'Just what the fuck was I forcibly signed up for?'

Chapter 2

Life : Death

End

Omake

Oni and Watcher

Special Written By GreenWarrior291

Rigel opened his eyes, confused as to why he did this since he had just fallen asleep after the hell he had gone through with his father and the others in the Sanctuary, between the Witches 'tea party', those FUCKING RABBITS AND ROUND TWO WITH ELSA. He pushed himself up from what he assumed to be his bed only to find out it was the floor, covered in what seemed to be a shroud of darkness.

"There is only one explanation for this. I think." Rigel said to himself as he brushed off any dust that gathered on his clothes, convinced that there was something at work here. "Witch. I know you can hear me. What's going on here?"

As he says this, he takes a quick look around his surroundings, having an odd feeling that someone he knows is around here. This prompted the half blood oni to start moving around, attempting to figure out what this place is.

"Hey! Envy! Are you ignoring me?"

There was no response which annoyed Rigel since this could mean one of two things. The first being that the Witch of Envy was trying to test him, which seemed to happen with increasing frequency since the incident with Petelgeuse. The second is that this isn't her and is actually some other being, perhaps Od Laguna. This is merely speculation on the boy's end and yet he feels like he isn't too off. The location is filled with darkness but it's not the same like the shadows that the Witch of Envy creates. This made the boy prepare himself for a fight, managing to grab one of his kunai after flicking his wrist to activate the mounted mechanism on his ninja garb.

'Considering that this place is off, I'll need to be ready for anything.'

Once affirming this train of thought, Rigel walked around for a bit, finding nothing but emptiness. He walked and walked until he realized that this dark void he was in seemed endless.

He lowered his weapon while starting to call out for the others.

"Okay, this is ridiculous. Hey, Old Man, are you here? Za-chan? Kaa-san? Emmy? Ram-sama? Anybody? Where the hell am I?!"

The second Rigel finished shouting this, his senses began to alert him that someone was there. This caused him to turn towards the location of this entity only for the entire place to change into a white room in a blink of an eye.

"The hell?"

"Welcome Natsuki Rigel. Son of Natsuki Subaru and Natsuki Rem."

Rigel turned towards the voice, noticing that it was wearing a dark hood and cape. At first Rigel was unsure for a moment before holding his kunai in an offensive form, ready to attack the moment he saw the mysterious figure act in a hostile manner. If he could, he would have summoned Zarestia to his side, considering she had fallen asleep next to him in his arms, but he was used to her not being allowed to go to places where he was sent to at this point.

The mysterious figure paused for a moment before chuckling a little.

"Hm. Like father like son I suppose. You two are quite the hostile type towards strangers."

"What do you even know about the Old Man?" Rigel spoke with a hostile tone, not liking the way the mysterious figure spoke about his father. The mysterious figure turned towards a part of the room to reveal something to Rigel. The boy stood still for a moment until he saw a familiar young girl with twin tails and a petite crown on the right side of the head. She had appeared out of nowhere and it seemed like she was asleep, but he knew better since she would have woken up immediately the moment she realized she wasn't at his fathers side.

"Shorty..."

Rigel put away his kunai to immediately go check on the little loli spirit. While this happened, the mysterious figure was a bit surprised by his instant and thoughtless reaction, recalling how Rigel's father had the same reaction when seeing Beatrice.

'This is quite interesting.'

The mysterious figure thinks this as he crosses his arms, having an interest in the boy. That resembles his father in many different ways. Rigel approached the sleeping loli spirit and began to move her gently, not wanting to hurt the little girl.

"Come on Pixie, wake up. It's me, Rigel."

Rigel shook Beatrice a bit, hoping that this would wake her up yet she continued to sleep. This caused the boy to have flashbacks of his home, of how those he cared about died by the hands of the Witch cult...by the madman known as Sloth. He got up with rage filling his blood before turning towards the mysterious figure, his eyes filled with hate and fueled by the legendary sword on his back and the orb of a great spirit spiritually lodged into his chest.

"Well, that's quite a touching gesture from you, considering your relationship with her." The mysterious figure said in a calm manner. Rigel did not like hearing anything about that considering how many loops it took for him to bury that hatchet with her. With that, he didn't have a second thought about charging directly at the mysterious figure. He looked at the boy and for a second he smiled as he recalled Rigel's father attempting to do this on him once. He continued to smile while waiting for the right moment before changing his form into one of an older version of Rem. Rigel saw this and immediately stopped on his track, not being able to harm his own mother despite not being the real her. He already had been forced to do that once and vowed to never do so again, even if it killed him.

"Y-You...motherfu—"

"Is that any way to speak to your mother?" The mysterious figure in the form of Rem spoke, attempting to provoke the boy, which did work. He was beginning to see nothing but red by how this person was not only mocking his mother but also talking the exact same way she would use her own mannerisms.

"How dare you...mock her by doing this shit...!"

The boy looked down as tears began to fall down his cheeks, feeling helpless as he was being reminded of the biggest pain in his life and biting his lip hard enough that blood began to drip from the lower part of it. The mysterious figure saw this and couldn't help but pity the boy. Pity enough to revert back to his cloaked form. As he did this, Rigel started to question him before the figure tried to pull that same stunt twice with what little coherence he clung onto with his mounting rage.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who just watches."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?" Rigel asked as he found that answer both annoying and vague. He hated it with a passion. The watcher couldn't help but chuckle a bit by the way Rigel reacted.

"What's so funny?"

"Sorry, you just remind me a lot of your father, or maybe you got that from your aunt."

"What do you even know about them?" Rigel spoke in a hostile manner, not trusting this 'Watcher' one bit. The watcher had noticed this but before he could even answer the first question, Rigel continued to ask, "What did you do to blondie?!"

"I didn't harm her if you are assuming that, boy."

"Then why is she unconscious?!"

"...well, she isn't needed yet."

"Needed? For what?"

The watcher stood silent after hearing this question, pointing his attention at a door, one that had the symbol of sloth. Rigel noticed this and at first was confused since he saw that there were many doors until he saw sloth. The only thing on his mind when seeing that symbol is Petelguese. He clenched his fist for a moment before hearing the watcher say:

"You are quite the anomaly, Natsuki Rigel."

"What do you mean?" Rigel spoke out of both curiosity and restraint. The watcher took note of this while answering the boy's question.

"I've watched countless of different timelines, different worlds where your father has made many different choices but your world...yours is different."

"Again. What do you mean by this?" Rigel asked once again while crossing his arms, not understanding what the watcher was talking about. The watcher took notice of this and quickly replied in a kind manner,

"Sorry, I forget that you mortals don't understand the things I have seen. Here, allow me to show you what I'm talking about."

The moment the watcher had finished speaking, he snapped his fingers to show the boy the different timelines, starting with the one where Rigel's father was trying to save Rem and Louis in the watchtower.

"This here is a world where your father constantly keeps fighting to save everyone. He asked for help. He helped save your mother despite not having to. He didn't run away when things were too tough and he relied on his allies when he needed them the most instead of relying on that cursed ability you two share."

"...what? You know about—"

"I do. That is my role as a watcher, I watch everything."

"But why? More importantly, how?" Rigel questioned, not understanding why someone would take such a job or how Envy would even allow this without ripping that person into paste with those shadow arms of hers. The watcher looked at Rigel for a moment before snapping his fingers.

"You guys wouldn't understand...anyway, this world is one where your father had chosen his pride, leaving him to become—"

"—A witch cultist...!" Rigel spoke out with anger since this was something he had seen before from Satella. The watcher noticed Rigel's reaction, taking a note that he might have seen something like this before. This prompted him to snap his fingers again to change the scenery to something different.

"This world was one where your father couldn't kill himself to save your mother due to how much fear he had towards both her and your aunt."

Rigel looked at the world of wrath and all he could think of is how much his father is a coward.

"...stupid coward...always thinking of the easiest way out first."

The watcher looked at Rigel for a second before switching the place, showing him three more worlds. The world of Natsuki Subaru accepting the contract with Echidna, a world where Natsuki Subaru was filled with vengeance after having kept the last words Rem had told him before dying in his hands, and a world where Natsuki Subaru had white hair and killed everyone in search for himself. Seeing all of this caused Rigel to be conflicted since most of these worlds are versions of his father that had been corrupted or went the wrong way because of his bad decisions. The only world where his father wasn't an irredeemable piece of shit is the first world, the one where his mother is in a coma-like state and the one where he was seeking revenge for his mothers murder. He actually felt kinship with that version considering he did the same thing. The boy stood silent as he mulled these visions over before turning towards the watcher in a serious manner.

"What...what did my father do to create my world...the one I was born in...?" he hesitantly asked. Envy had informed him that his 'timeline', as it were, had been entirely erased by his and his fathers actions but not how it happened. If this 'Watcher' knew the answer...then he'd take any risk in getting it

"Well...it was one where he ran away, with your mother. Before the whale and Petelgeuse incidents."

As the watcher says this, he snaps his fingers to show the boy what he means. As the place went to that world, Rigel couldn't help but feel some guilt over the hell his father would have gone through. The watcher looked with sympathy at the boy before changing the world back into the white void. Just as he did this, he offer a helping hand while saying,

"Currently, your father is off doing a task for me. Would you like to see?"

Rigel looked at the watcher for a moment before looking forward, thinking of the information he just learned. With his mind barely holding on to his sanity after Envy had sprung her own personal trap on him in Sanctuary, he is surprised that he hasn't broken down completely yet. He took a few deep breaths before accepting the offer he was given, wanting to see what his father was exactly up to.

"Alright then...Natsuki Subaru, do put on a show. You have an important audience member now."

As he said this, he snapped his fingers again only this time for both Rigel and himself to be in the world where Natsuki Subaru is located with his ally, both watching on the young man's progress.

The first thing he saw made him suck in a deep breath.

"Well...shit."

AN: Hello! Welcome! This here is Chapter 2 and while it came out a little later than expected, hopefully you all will feel like I'm not skimping out on the quality of the stuff.
This chapter's Omake is by GreenWarrior291, author of 'Follow the Fallen Stars' for which I beta read and he who beta reads this and I go back and forth on ideas with.

As you can see, this takes place in the future of this fic, but whether or not ALL of what you read here is going to happen...well, you'll see it when you see it!

For anyone reading this, if you feel like you want to write an Omake of your own, or do a WHDAA-Style reaction fic, you have my blessing to do so, but for the Omake, please contact me first with what content you wish to write for it. If I approve, I can't guarantee that it will appear on the very next chapter, but I CAN promise to at put it up eventually. Also, if someone DOES do a WHDAA style reaction fic, I will obviously give shout-outs to them and tell the readers here to go check it out.

Once again, I do not own Re:Zero. That belongs to its creator and studio White Fox that animates it and the light novel/manga company that publishes it!