Unravel the World

Ch IX ~ Ego Trips

Ayato leaned over the edge of the building, calculating whether he'd be able to jump it. Only three stories tall. He could do it.

Watching the windows fly past only inches from his face, Ayato scaled the building in a matter of seconds. The moment his boots collided with the pavement, He kicked straight through the glass of the window that had replaced walls. Banjou was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by his little hooded minions. Before anyone in the coffee shop could even register what was happening, Banjou collided with the counter, making a satisfying thud and bringing two of the hoodies with him.

He laughed a little before purring "What are you screwing around here for, Banjou? Do you want another beating until you can't cough up any blood?"

Banjou swallowed and Ayato took great pleasure in his fear.

"Huh?" he growled, leaning closer.

"A-Ayato - " Banjou began before a girl in the Anteiku uniform walked between them.

Some new kid with the uniform and an eyepatch said her name in shock: "Touka-chan!"

"Ayato," she said angrily, staring him dead in the eyes.

"Yo," Ayato grinned, almost laughing at how haughty she was. "Long time no see, my dumb sister."

The kid with the eyepatch drew back in shock a little, but Ayato paid him no heed. He just kept grinning at Touka. She looked so much like their father, with that hair always over her face, those damn blue-grey eyes. She acted a lot like Ayato, too. Or, at least tried to.

"Where have you been wandering around, you idiot?" she growled, trying her best to be intimidating.

Ayato laughed at how frail she seemed after all these years. "I've been out learning about society," he said, mocking her attempt to scare him. "Unlike you, who are complacent in your peace." He had always lived his life knowing that the strong survive and the weak perish.

"You self-important little brat!" she shouted, getting way too emotional to even consider winning a fight.

"You're the brat, stupid. Look around you - "

He was cut off by the tinkling of a bell announcing the entrance of another person.

"Is that long enough, Ayato-kun?" a low voice drawled, "Can we come in now?"

Iriai had told them. As soon as he got out of here, Ayato was going to make sure that she didn't tell Yamori anything again. Yamori was like an itch in his mind, a fly buzzing around inside his skull that he couldn't get to. Plus, he'd been told to stay off the Rize case ever since the incident in the Aqua Building. How dare he be here...

"Why are those two here, too?" Banjou's voice was fringed with panic. The three of them working together was Banjou's worst nightmare.

"Forgive the intrusion," Nico hummed, turning the sign on the door to 'closed' and waltzing in like a fairy princess.

"Hey, Ayato-kun," Yamori said, grinning like a psychopath, knowing that Ayato would willingly kill him if he had the strength. "Oh my - " Faking shock. What a creep, as Iriai would say.

"I heard that your sister was here..." Nico grinned in that odd way that he talked, like he was half thinking to himself. "Aren't you both just gorgeous!" Nico would hardly be a match in a fight for Ayato. "I'm so jealous..." If only he didn't have Yamori's damn protection.

Touka seemed shocked by the way Nico was acting. That was, of course, because she had never met him. Ayato had known him for years and even he wasn't used to it.