"Shake in fear, little mortals. Everything's already over. A real god is about to descend."
Mephistopheles was facing three of them alone, yet he still wore that crooked, smug grin. He looked past Ryuuto and the others as if they were annoyances blocking his view. Not even a flicker of worry crossed his face.
Then the old demon did something that made even Tony and Wolverine freeze.
He didn't throw the sphere of condensed dark energy he'd been charging.
He opened his mouth… and swallowed it whole.
Tony's visor flickered. "He's not seriously about to nuke himself, right?"
Wolverine's jaw tightened. "Either that or he's finally lost it."
But when the air thickened with negative energy so dense it felt like tar, when the world dimmed around them like someone sucked the light out… both of them stiffened. Their breath turned cold. Their lips paled.
"Ryuuto," Tony muttered, "we doing something, or waiting to die dramatically?"
"Yeah," Wolverine growled. "Call the shot, kid."
Ryuuto's eyebrow twitched. "Relax. He's loud, not smart."
Shion's dry voice echoed in his mind.
[Host, please don't taunt the demon swallowing bombs. I'm too young to become system debris.]
"Not helping," Ryuuto muttered back.
Mephistopheles kept growing, bones cracking outward, muscles expanding like someone pumped raw evil straight into his veins.
Tony exhaled nervously. "Anytime now."
"Fine, fine."
Ryuuto took a step forward, energy spiraling around his hand.
"Ninjutsu: Shuriken Shadow Clone!"
Dozens of shuriken split mid-air and tore toward Mephistopheles like a metal storm.
Tony added a blazing repulsor blast.
Wolverine leapt with claws out, aiming for the demon's throat.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Smoke flashed across the hall. When it cleared, Mephistopheles stood unmoved. Not a scratch. Not a wobble. Wolverine's claws scraped against his skin and sparked like they'd hit a furnace.
"That's it?" the demon taunted. His tongue flicked out, forked and dripping malice. His eyes pulsed red. "Children throwing toys."
Tony's face tightened inside his helmet.
"Well then," Mephistopheles continued, "allow me to make the first real declaration of this fight."
He grinned, wide and feral.
"You are no longer qualified to live. Offer your souls… quietly."
He shot forward.
A single charge. One motion.
Wolverine and Tony were knocked aside like flies.
Ryuuto skidded back from the blast of demonic pressure.
Far behind them, in the corner, Quicksilver finally dared raise his head.
"Ha! I knew it! Jiang— uh, Ryuuto's done! Should've stayed a powerless loser!"
Ryuuto sighed. "Man… this moron again."
He gathered chakra through his legs.
"Leaf Great Whirlwind!"
His kick slammed into Mephistopheles' neck. The impact cracked the floor beneath them.
The demon barely flinched.
His enhanced body—now overloaded with swallowed dark energy—was like striking a mountain. He simply backhanded Ryuuto's skull—
—or tried to.
Ryuuto crumbled into sand.
A substitution.
The real Ryuuto stood behind him.
Shadow Clone Technique!
Hundreds of clones exploded into existence, rushing Mephistopheles in every direction. A tidal wave of fists and kicks rained down.
The demon snarled, unleashing explosive orbs of dark energy to tear through the clones, but every time he shattered one, three more filled the gap. They clashed in a blur of steel, sand, and demonic fire. Close-quarters brutality. No space to breathe.
Ryuuto wiped blood from his lip, heart pounding.
Damn. His defense is ridiculous.
Shion whistled in his mind.
[Host, please don't die. It's very inconvenient for me.]
Thanks for the emotional support, Ryuuto thought bitterly.
Quicksilver meanwhile perched on a rafters beam, kicking his legs like a spoiled gremlin.
"This is great! Keep dying, Ryuuto! Faster!"
A cold voice crept up behind him.
"Comfortable spot you picked."
Quicksilver froze.
"Wolverine?!" he squeaked.
Logan cracked his knuckles.
"You've been asking for this."
Quicksilver panicked and bolted, using his speed to vanish in a streak. Wolverine chased after him like a very angry, very determined terminator.
"Keep running, punk!" Wolverine roared. "When I catch you, you'll regret being born!"
Back at the center of the battlefield—
Ryuuto and Mephistopheles crashed into each other again, chakra and demonic power detonating on impact. The blast hurled both of them through what was left of the White House interior. They flipped in the air, landed, skidded, but neither took their eyes off the other.
They weren't just fighting.
They were trying to erase the other from existence.
"Ryuuto!" Mephistopheles howled. "Bring out your strongest card! If you don't, you won't even get a chance to scream!"
His body convulsed—then expanded again, swollen with another layer of forbidden power he dragged from some abyssal pit.
A crushing aura swept the battlefield, ripping abandoned furniture from the ground and hurling debris into the air.
Outside, a platoon of soldiers stared at the floating rubble.
"My god… is this real?"
"Sir, do we go in and shoot those things?"
The commander couldn't even form a sentence before—
BOOM.
The roof of the White House tore upward as Mephistopheles' colossal form erupted through it—now a towering giant, his shadow blotting out the moon.
The soldiers in the front row screamed as their souls were ripped from their bodies in an instant.
The demon roared across Washington like a nightmare made of fire.
...
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