My hand was still wet.
Warm.
Sticky.
Blood clung to my fingers in slow, lazy trails, slipping between my knuckles and dripping from my fingertips before splattering against the fractured stone beneath my boots.
Each drop hit with a soft, almost intimate sound, as if the ground itself was breathing it in.
Where it landed, it steamed faintly.
Thin wisps curled upward, dissolving into the air like ghosts that couldn't quite decide whether to flee or linger, their forms unraveling before they could escape.
Only then did a small, inconvenient realization finally surface.
"…Ah."
I hadn't closed the broadcast.
The thought didn't arrive with panic, or urgency, or even surprise.
It came with the same mild irritation one feels when realizing they forgot to turn off a light in a room they already walked past.
An oversight.
Nothing more.
For a moment, I simply stared at my hand.
I flexed my fingers slowly, watching dark-red droplets slide free, stretch, and finally fall.
The blood felt heavier than it should have, as if it remembered where it came from and wasn't eager to leave.
Somewhere far away—across continents, across oceans, across billions of screens—
People were still watching.
Watching me.
Watching this.
I exhaled through my nose, the sound slow and controlled.
"Well… that explains the screaming."
With my senses pushed so far beyond anything resembling normal, sound no longer behaved the way it used to. Distance had become a suggestion, not a rule. When billions of humans screamed at once, it didn't sound like thunder or chaos.
It sounded like a mosquito.
A thin, irritating buzz brushes against the edge of my perception.
I tilted my head slightly.
…Does Giratina hear things like this all the time?
If so—
Poor thing.
Honestly, I had assumed the pressure alone would be enough.
The suffocating gravity I had imposed on the planet.
The sky was turning ink-black as if the universe itself had been drowned in shadow.
The countless, colossal eyes opening above the world like a divine surveillance system, watching every city, every street, every heartbeat.
That should have been more than sufficient.
I had planned to end the transmission right after that.
Clean.
Efficient.
Final.
But then I'd seen him.
The black-winged one.
And everything else had slipped my mind.
Revenge has a way of doing that.
It narrows the world until only one thing remains in focus.
I lowered my gaze.
Downward.
At what remained beneath me.
Kokabiel—though to the human world he was nothing more than a black-winged figure—was no longer recognizable as anything resembling a proud, arrogant being.
He writhed in broken cycles beneath my hand, screaming, regenerating, dying, reviving, and repeating the process like a grotesque loop someone forgot to turn off.
There was no dignity left in him.
Only sensation.
Pain.
Awareness.
Yes.
I had forgotten about the broadcast.
My mistake.
But if forced to choose between public relations and revenge?
Revenge wins.
Every time.
I made sure he suffered.
Not quickly.
Not efficiently.
But thoroughly.
Completely.
Endlessly.
And yes—
I buffed him.
A lot.
I could practically hear the imaginary voices already.
Some idiot out there—probably hiding in a reinforced bunker or hammering angrily at a keyboard—was thinking:
"But Zevion, that was your enemy! Why are you buffing him?!"
I sighed, faintly disappointed by the lack of imagination.
Not all buffs are blessings.
Not all power-ups are merciful.
I had enhanced him, true—but not in the way people fantasize about when they hear that word.
I increased his spatial perception to an absurd extreme, forcing his mind to register distances, positions, and dimensions simultaneously.
I amplified his sensory intake until every nerve screamed, removing the natural dampeners that protect living beings from overload.
I sharpened his cognition, accelerated his thoughts, stripped away the filters that limit awareness and keep sanity intact.
In theory—
If applied to anyone else—
This would have created something terrifying.
A transcendent combatant capable of reacting to subatomic fluctuations, predicting motion before it occurred, and experiencing reality with unbearable clarity.
A monster.
But theory collapses in the presence of absolute strength.
I was fused with Giratina.
I wasn't a king.
I wasn't a god.
I was a multiversal constant wearing flesh.
A correction factor.
A fixed point.
Do you really think a handful of buffs—no matter how exotic—could threaten me?
No.
They existed for one reason only.
So he could feel it.
So he could understand suffering on a scale he had never even conceived.
So he could experience what it meant to have something vital torn away.
After all—
He had aimed for Sona's heart.
So I returned the favor.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I distorted his perception further.
Not randomly.
Not carelessly.
Deliberately.
With precision.
I fed him sensations.
The collective agony of an entire nation ravaged by heart disease.
The crushing tightness in millions of chests.
The creeping terror of oxygen-starved lungs fighting for air.
The slow, burning ache of organs failing one by one, system after system collapsing with no dramatic flair—just inevitability.
Every microsecond stretched into eternity inside his mind.
Time didn't pass for him.
It dragged.
He felt it all.
Every heartbeat that faltered.
Every gasp that never quite arrived.
Every quiet death that happened at three in the morning in sterile hospital rooms, where no one was holding their hand, and no one had the right words left to say.
Did it make sense?
No.
But I wasn't trying to make sense.
I was making a point.
Eventually, I ended the broadcast.
Finally.
The moment the unseen eyes vanished, the air itself seemed to relax.
The pressure eased, the invisible weight lifting just enough to be noticeable.
I wiped my hand against my coat, leaving behind a dark, ugly smear.
"…Jeez."
I rolled my neck once, listening to the faint crack of bone and tension releasing.
"Whoever said revenge doesn't satisfy," I muttered, "was lying. And was probably on someone's revenge list."
My chest felt lighter.
Calmer.
There was a deep, visceral relief pulsing through me—the kind you only feel after tearing something rotten out by the roots and knowing it won't poison anything ever again.
I looked down once more.
His heart was in my hand.
Or rather—
What used to be his heart.
I crushed it.
Again.
The sound was wet.
Dull.
Final.
And then—
Light surged.
Flesh reknitted.
Bones reformed.
A heartbeat returned with a panicked, desperate thud.
He gasped back to life just in time for my hand to plunge forward again.
I tore it out.
Once more.
I noticed something interesting then.
Even when frozen in time within the void I had sent him to, Max Revive still worked.
Fascinating.
So I repeated the process.
Rip.
Revive.
Rip.
Revive.
Again.
And again.
And then I stored him away in the Distortion World, suspended, broken, waiting.
I'd burned through an embarrassing number of Max Revives.
Worth it.
Was his torture over?
Of course not.
This was merely an intermission.
I had better things to do.
Plans.
Big ones.
I straightened, the blood now fully drying on my skin, as Giratina's presence settled behind my thoughts like a patient executioner awaiting the next name.
Next steps.
Legendary Pokémon.
Many of them.
Master Balls.
Rare Candies.
Enough resources to ensure that whatever came next wouldn't merely hurt—
It would break.
If this were an anime, ominous music would already be playing, warning of the arrival of the next "true villain."
So I decided to beat fate to the punch.
If a villain was coming—
I'd be the final boss first.
As for heroes or protagonists?
They wouldn't bother me.
I wasn't destroying the world indiscriminately.
I wasn't slaughtering for sport.
As long as they stayed in their lane, they could keep their moral speeches and power-of-friendship monologues.
Now that the world had seen even a fraction of what I could do…
Very few would dare look at me sideways.
Good.
That meant it was time for farming.
I scanned the ruined sky, eyes flicking across shattered formations and flailing black wings.
"Now then…"
I muttered, rolling my shoulders.
"Where are you… Azazel?"
Serafall had said he was the leader of the Fallen Angels.
Probably not the one who initiated the attack.
Probably not the mastermind—Kokabiel had acted alone.
But leadership comes with responsibility.
And responsibility comes with reparations.
I frowned slightly.
"…Seriously."
They all looked the same.
Black wings.
Armor.
Arrogant posture.
She really should have given me a picture.
I sighed softly.
Guess I'd just have to ask.
The hard way.
.....................................................................................................................................................
Author's Note:
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