[Third Person POV]
The three rogues, seeing how a child was disrupting their ritual, were furious.
They had been planning it for months, secretly kidnapped several people, and stole enough food so none of them died too soon.
Just obtaining the materials for the ritual circle took a week, not to mention the time it took to set it up.
Each of them was mad for different reasons.
The stray devil, Donovan Caldwell, was upset that his ascension ritual had been interrupted. Getting to ultimate class was considered an achievement for anyone, but for a stray like himself, who didn't even have the chance to reach high class before his defection, achieving this level was impossible. For his future to be cut off by some brat pissed him off to no end.
The mage in blue robes, Pierre Chalmers, had originally worked as a high-ranking researcher at Grazauberer. After several years of working to create this ritual, which could boost anyone's strength, he was removed from his position and expelled from the organization for the dark methods used in the ritual. The only reason he wasn't dead was that they didn't have any proof he killed someone in the process of making the ritual.
When he found Donovan, he managed to convince him not to eat him, and in exchange, would help him ascend to greater levels. Nearly a decade ago, the two used the ritual to elevate Donovan to high class. After that, they focused on feeding him whoever they could until they encountered some trouble two years ago.
Back then, they encountered Stuart Devereux, a French businessman whose company had recently been embroiled in some scandals. After hiding out at Stuart's place, the two rogues proposed that he help fund their efforts, which he agreed to, in exchange for targeting business rivals, something which was traced to them, causing them to flee to Japan.
Now, after so many years of effort and struggling, the three rogues, so close to having an ultimate class protector among them, were being stopped by a kid.
They had worked too hard for this. The trio had failed to perform it several times, always having to leave thanks to someone investigating, and now that they were on the final step, everything was grinding to a halt.
The fury each man felt at the obstacle that was this child was immense.
Donovan charged at Hajime, the giant claws on his right hands swiping down with immense force.
Using a body replacement jutsu to dodge, Hajime appeared a few meters to the right, a damaged sheet of metal taking his place, crumpling under the weight of the stray's attack.
Seconds later, Hajime dodged once more, this time elemental attacks from a magical artifact Stuart wielded.
The only rogue who wasn't attacking, Pierre, was speeding up his work on creating the ritual circle.
Their location was compromised, and they had no idea if the kid had informed anyone else about them, so they needed to finish as soon as possible.
The materials they needed for the ritual would be difficult to replace, and were something they couldn't afford.
This was the best chance they'd have for the ritual, so while his partners distracted the interloper, Pierre focused on getting it done soon.
While fighting, Hajime sneakily coiled several strings around the hydra stray's body, hoping he might be able to cut through part of him with ease.
Pulling the string taut squeezed Donovan's body, causing him to use all his strength and jump back, ripping the strings off him, but losing one of his left forearms in the process.
Shooting an overheat at the hydra, Hajime pierced the stray's stomach three times in quick succession, causing blood to pour out of the wounds and his mouth.
His teammates, seeing their heavy hitter already injured to such an extent, panicked.
Stuart, in a bid of desperation, launched attack after attack, draining over half his energy to give Donovan a chance to recover.
Pierre, who wasn't willing to let their efforts go to waste, sped up further, accepting the risks of any errors that might occur.
Upon seeing this change, Hajime switched his focus to them, but unfortunately for him, Donovan's injuries were more superficial than Hajime had realized.
When Hajime was about to crash hit fist into Stuart, he quickly shifted himself before moving further away, narrowly dodging Donovan's attack.
Using a string to connect to Stuart, Hajime pulled him and himself to the ceiling, restraining the hand holding a magic weapon.
Looking into Stuart's eyes, Hajime activated his Geass and commanded him to distract his friend by any means necessary.
Dropping them to the floor, Donovan swiped at the two, willing to lose his ally if it meant killing the brat.
Stuart launched a large burst of fire directly at Donovan's face, temporarily blinding him.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, BASTARD?!" The devil screamed at his colleague.
Stuart ignored Donovan's screaming and continued to attack.
Donovan, furious, charged his ally and slammed his palms into Stuart's chest, punctuated by a sickening crack, breaking a few bones and knocking the weapon from his hands.
However, Donovan was shocked to see Stuart ignore the injury he'd gotten, getting up and charging at him with no weapon, as if he somehow had an edge after what had just happened.
Turning slightly, Donovan flicked his tail out from behind to grab Stuart, knowing that he needed to be careful. His ally suddenly turned on him after a few seconds with that kid, someone who was extremely unnerving.
Now trying to keep his distance while restraining his ally, Donovan launched wind blades using his sharp claws as a focus.
As the fight dragged on, Donovan grew increasingly unnerved by the kid who had attacked them. In a world with magic, seeing a kid like that meant they either had a low magic affinity and got in by chance, or they were a freak of nature that you wanted to stay away from. Donovan was thinking this kid was the latter.
After all, though Pierre's focus lay in rituals, rather than warding, he was still a highly competent magician. His wards would easily keep most ordinary individuals away, so the kid arriving here was already a bad premonition.
What was worse was the complete lack of a reaction to anything Donovan did or said.
Insulting him? Nothing.
Threatening his family? No.
The more Donovan tried to get under the kid's skin and failed, the more it got under his own.
HOW?! He was just a kid!
Eventually, just as Donovan felt he was about to go crazy, Pierre shouted, "It's done!"
Donovan grunted, knowing that even though they were ready, they wouldn't complete the ritual at this rate. Hajime stood in front of them, fighting him, while a clone was shielding their sacrifices.
As the strongest of the rogues, Donovan wasn't sure he could kill Hajime. It was clear the kid was already holding back, though why, he didn't know. What he did know was that even if he managed to hold Hajime off long enough to get their victims in place, then Hajime could just interfere mid-ritual.
The fight, if you could call it that, stalled. Hajime had stopped advancing, leaving Donovan unsure of what to do.
After barely dodging another condensed string, keeping himself from getting impaled again, Donovan was struck with an idea.
Throwing Stuart with his tail, he slammed into an unprepared Pierre, forcing him into the ritual circle. Donovan smirked seeing that, before rushing over there himself. Activating the ritual circle, a purple and blue glow filled the room, the ritual's magic infecting the three rogues.
"GAHHH!" Pierre screamed in fright. "You idiot! The ritual was designed for one person to absorb the surrounding targets! Now it's the three of us absorbing nothing; even I don't know what could happen."
The ritual's light grew brighter and brighter, engulfing the entire warehouse in a supernatural glow.
Seconds later, as the light receded, something else was standing in the ritual circle.
Gone were the three rogues; instead, they were replaced by a giant, monstrous being.
Donovan's body had doubled in size, reaching a height of 4 meters. His torn forearm was replaced with a new one, while it and the rest of his arms all swelled to the size of tree trunks. His tails, previously half-fused, were now completely separated, even creating a third one.
The most noticeable change, however, was his head, or rather, heads.
Previously, it was just Donovan's enlarged head connected by several necks.
Now, it was the rogue trio, Pierre, Stuart, and Donovan, each connected to the hulking form by a thick neck, capable of coiling and crushing any enemy that got too close.
Their auras, each of which was high class or less, now surged to intermediate ultimate class. Hajime sighed with relief that it was still weaker than him, but didn't dare let his guard down. His previous probes at Donovan's indicated that his physical strength was far greater than normal, which meant this strange pseudo-hydra was likely similar.
Still, this presented a great opportunity for Yatsufusa. An ultimate class enemy with above-average physical strength was a dangerous force to be reckoned with, even with the weakness to holy energy.
Charging at the Hydra, Hajime shot several strings past their necks, coating each of them in a thin layer of Armament Haki. Thrashing to remove the strings, the hydra quickly broke them, but they had already bought Hajime the time he needed to make a clone for the next part of his plan.
While the clone went off to do it's work, Hajime fired a concussive beam from his eyes, keeping the rogue's attention on him.
(A/N: Quick question- Is it rogue's or rouges'? Because technically its one person right now, but it was made up of three people originally, and it still kind of is three people. Probably could've just said hydra's, but now I'm just curious.)
The hydra charged forward, it's massive body jiggling around like when Queen from One Piece dances. One of it's heads now slightly deformed from the ritual, launched forward to take a bite.
Hajime jumped in the air and created a Barrier beneath his feet, pushing off it and launching himself above the mouth.
Landing on the back of it's head, Hajime slid down the neck, parrying attacks from the other heads.
Dodging the three heads by moving around it's body, Hajime superficially tied them together, which they realized and tried to undo. Taking advantage of this, Hajime coated himself in lightning, senjutsu, and haki before using some string to slingshot himself at the hydra.
Slamming right into it's gut, the hydra's ribs cracked before the hydra itself was launched back, landing directly on the sealing formation that his clone put behind him.
While the hydra was stunned, Hajime ran forward and activated the seal, locking the hydra's muscles in place, before transferring the seal onto it's body so he could move it
Once the fight was over, Hajime turned to the captives, figuring it was best to deal with them first before anything else.
Taking them out of the cages one at a time, he cast a hypnosis spell over them before getting the next one. Once everyone was out, he gave them a fake, but semi-plausible story for the authorities. They were all kidnapped by this cult for a sacrifice, but were freed by a strange man who knocked out the cultists and took them away in his truck.
Though it was far from the best lie, everyone saying the same story would be enough to fool the cops. Or at the very least give so little information that it wouldn't help any investigation.
After sending the civilians out, Hajime created several clones who all sprouted grimm wings, and grabbed the hydra using the string fruit.
When the hydra was outside, Hajime quickly flew it into the forest.
-----
[Random Officer POV]
Over the last few weeks, people in the nearby towns had gone missing. It was unknown who, how, or why. It seemed like it'd be a cold case before the investigation began.
Suddenly, everyone was back.
First there was one call, then several more followed. The entire town went into uproar despite how late it was. I can't even blame them since it seemed like an impossible case.
No leads. Nothing connecting the victims. No ransom note. Nothing.
It was like they vanished into thin air.
Now, in the middle of the night, they reappeared, walking down the street like a horde of zombies. The description was more accurate than you'd think. They were all emaciated by their captors, several of them covered in cuts or bruises.
Things calmed down after the first half hour. They'd all been brought to a nearby hospital and were getting treatment.
When we asked them about what happened we got a pretty concise timeline, but near the end things got strange.
While almost everyone said that a man came in knocked out the cultists, and dragged them away for whatever reason, one person had a demonstroubly different story.
Instead of what everyone else said, they talked about a child who created clones and covered themselves in lightning, fighting against a hydra that was three people fused together.
It was assumed them might've had a psychotic break of some sort, but over the last few days everyone had seen a therapist to talk about what happened.
The therapist said they didn't seem crazy, but might have hallucinated what happened.
Things got weirder when they asked to take a few cops out to the kidnapping site, and when they did, their story reached an unbelievable level of believability.
They described almost exactly how the fight they saw went, showing the damage to the building in the order it happened. Even the forensic analyst said they seemed to be right, which meant I had no idea what to believe.
-----
[Third Person POV]
The police officer slumped down onto their desk, exhausted from all the work he'd been doing over the last few days.
Or so he thought.
Seconds later a man walked into the office after having cast a sleep spell.
"Let's see what happened here."
Picking up the file about the case, he read about the one strange victim before a glint appeared in his eye.
"Seems another sacred gear wielder has awakened. Time to have a little chat with them."
__________
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!