The morning light filtered through the blinds of Raizer's apartment, casting striped shadows across the kitchen counter. The smell of fresh coffee grounds began to fill the air, a small mercy in a world that had become increasingly loud. Raizer stood over the brewer, his eyes half-closed, waiting for the first drip.
He was happy that he had learned to completely control his King's Aura by now. Some people still felt it but others couldn't even find it if they tried.
Then, the air shifted.
Through his senses, the world outside his door became a blueprint of intent. He felt two heartbeats. One was frantic, jagged, and spiked with a sickly, sadistic glee. The other was heavy, rhythmic, but muffled—like a powerful engine being forced to run in neutral.
Raizer sighed, the steam from his mug warming his face. He recognized the dull resonance of the second heartbeat. It was the sound of a mind stripped of its steering wheel. Similar to the man standing behind Ishtar in Orario.
- BOOM!
The heavy oak door didn't just open; it disintegrated. The hinges screamed as they were torn from the frame, and the slab of wood whistled through the air, narrowly missing the kitchen table before embedding itself in the far wall.
In the wreckage of the doorway stood a woman with messy brunette hair and eyes that looked like shattered glass. Behind her, draped in a bespoke purple suit that cost more than Raizer's yearly interest, stood Zebediah Kilgrave.
"Oh, look at that," Kilgrave smirked, stepping over the threshold. "He didn't even spill his drink. Jessica, darling, the man has no manners. Why don't you teach him how to greet a guest?"
Kilgrave, aka The Purple Man, saw the video. And he wished to have another 'bodyguard' protect him. Hence, he decided to give this accountant a visit. His face twisting in a sadistic grin.
On the other hand, Jessica Jones didn't speak. She didn't even growl. She simply lunged.
Raizer set his coffee down on the counter with a deliberate, slow motion. As Jessica's fist—a weapon capable of punching through a steel vault—neared his face, Raizer tilted his head. The rush of air ruffled his hair, the force of the miss shattering the tiles on the backsplash behind him.
"You're tracking mud on the carpet," Raizer said, his voice flat.
Jessica swung again, a wide, sweeping hook. Raizer stepped into the arc, his movement so fluid it looked like he was underwater. He placed a single hand on her shoulder, not to push, but to pivot. Using her own momentum, he spun her around, sending her crashing into the sofa.
[HOST! WARNING!] The System pulsed a vibrant violet. [Pheromone levels in the room are reaching critical mass! The 'Purple Man' is outputting enough command-chemicals to enslave a small stadium! Shall I activate the 'King's Resolve' filter?]
'It's a passive,' Raizer thought, 'Did you just speak because you hadn't spoken since the start of the chapter? Talk about an attention-seeker.'
Jessica scrambled up, her movements jerky but terrifyingly fast. She grabbed the edge of his heavy dining table and flipped it like it was a piece of cardboard. Raizer didn't retreat. He walked toward her, leaping over the spinning table with a casual grace.
In mid-air, Jessica caught him, her fingers locking around his bicep. She squeezed, her superhuman strength intending to snap the bone like a dry twig.
Raizer didn't flinch. He looked down at her hand, then up at her vacant eyes. "You're stronger than the Amazons," he noted. "But you have no technique. You're just a blunt instrument."
With a sudden burst of Absolute Control, Raizer's arm contracted and slipped out. Jessica's grip slipped as if she were trying to hold onto a slimy snake. He grabbed her wrist, twisted slightly, and used a standard aikido throw to send her skidding across the hardwood floor.
"Jessica! Stop playing with him!" Kilgrave barked from the hallway, his face turning a deeper shade of mauve. "Break his legs! Now!"
The command hit Jessica like a physical whip. Her muscles corded, her veins bulging in her neck as she fought the internal resistance of her own body. She let out a choked sound and launched herself at Raizer in a frantic, desperate tackle.
Raizer began to move in earnest. To anyone watching, it would have looked like a master dancer practicing with a beginner. He dodged, parried, and redirected. He tapped her elbows to throw off her aim; he swept her legs only to catch her by the collar and set her back up, only to strike her again.
He was toying with her. He was measuring the output of a Marvel-tier enhanced human against the Level-5 he had fought in Danmachi. The Level-5 was stronger.
Jessica grabbed a decorative floor lamp and swung it like a mace. Raizer caught the pole, sliced it in half with chi-coated hands, and tapped her lightly on the nose with the base. The disrespect was calculated. He wanted to see if the mind could override the command. Sadly, it couldn't.
"Enough," Raizer whispered.
Jessica came in for one last, suicidal charge, her hands outstretched to crush his skull. Raizer planted his feet, the floorboards groaning under his weight.
He pulled his right fist back, a golden, translucent glow beginning to coat his knuckles. This wasn't just a punch; it was a concentrated burst of internal energy designed to disrupt the nervous system without shattering the ribcage.
Chi-Boost: Ripple
He drove his fist into her solar plexus. His Chi spread across her entire body in waves.
The impact sounded like a muffled bell. Jessica's eyes widened, the dullness flickering for a second as the sheer force of the Chi-saturated blow short-circuited the signals traveling from her brain to her limbs. She folded forward, the air leaving her lungs in a sharp gasp, and collapsed into Raizer's arms, unconscious.
He lowered her gently to the floor. "That was a decent workout," Raizer muttered, stretching his neck. "Better than an alarm clock, anyway."
Raizer turned his attention to the doorway.
Kilgrave was staring, his mouth slightly agape. He hadn't moved. He was leaning against the doorframe, his pheromones thick enough to be visible as a purple haze in the morning light.
"You..." Kilgrave stammered, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and genuine confusion. "You should be on your knees. I told you to stop. I told you to die. Why aren't you listening?!"
Raizer walked toward him, his boots crunching on the splinters of his door. Each step sent a ripple of King's Aura forward, pushing back the purple haze as if it were nothing more than cigarette smoke.
"I have a very high threshold for bad advice," Raizer said, stopping inches from Kilgrave's face.
Kilgrave lunged back, his eyes darting around for another pawn, another way out. "Stay back! I am Zebediah Kilgrave! I can make you tear your own heart out with a single word!"
"You talk too much," Raizer noted.
Kilgrave screamed, "KILL YOURSELF! SCREAM UNTIL YOUR LUNGS BURST! FALL ASLEEP AND NEVER WAKE UP!"
The commands echoed in the small hallway. Raizer didn't even blink. He looked at Kilgrave with the bored, clinical gaze of a man looking at a typo in a 200-page report.
Kilgrave's face contorted. "What are you?!"
"I'm an accountant," Raizer said, raising his arm, "And my mood is bad."
Raizer didn't punch him. He didn't want to get purple blood on his clean shirt. Instead, he simply raised his hand and delivered a sharp, practiced flick of his middle finger against Kilgrave's forehead.
Chi-Boost: Quake (Mini)
- PING!
A tiny spark of Chi traveled from Raizer's finger into Kilgrave's skull. The villain's eyes rolled back instantly, his knees turning to jelly as he slumped into a heap in the hallway, silenced. His mind was destroyed, sending him into a permanent coma.
Raizer looked at the mess in his apartment. His door was gone, his table was flipped, and there were two unconscious 'Supers' in his living room. He looked back at his coffee on the counter. It was probably cold now.
Raizer didn't reach for a phone. He didn't need to. Through the window, he could see the glint of a high-powered lens from the building across the street, and his senses registered the sudden spike in chatter on the encrypted frequencies nearby.
He didn't need to call the authorities; he just had to wait for the vultures to smell the kill.
He walked back to the kitchen, dumped his cold coffee into the sink, and started a fresh pot. The silence in the room was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic breathing of the unconscious Jessica Jones and the soft gurgle of the brewer. Ten minutes later, right as the coffee finished dripping, the floorboards in the hallway groaned.
Raizer didn't turn around. "The door is already open. Or, more accurately, it's in the living room. Come in, Coulson."
Phil Coulson stepped over the threshold, his expression a mix of professional neutrality and genuine bafflement. He looked at the wreckage of the apartment—the pulverized tiles, the embedded door, the flipped table—and then at the man in the purple suit fallen on the floor.
"Zebediah Kilgrave," Coulson noted, his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. "We've been tracking his trail of victims for months. He's one of the most dangerous assets on our watchlist. And you... you beat him?"
- Slurp~
"He was loud," Raizer said, pouring a fresh mug. He didn't offer one to Coulson. "Take him. He's a liability I don't want on my carpet anymore."
Coulson signaled to two tactical agents behind him, who promptly moved in with specialized, sound-dampening restraints and a localized pheromone-scrubber. As they dragged Kilgrave out, Coulson turned his gaze toward the sofa where Jessica Jones lay.
"And the girl?" Coulson asked, his tone shifting to something more assertive. "Jessica Jones. She has a history with Kilgrave. She's an enhanced individual with severe trauma and high-impact capabilities. For her safety and the public's, she should be processed at a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility."
Raizer turned, the steam from his mug swirling around his face. The King's Aura flared, just a fraction. It wasn't a roar, but a low, vibrating hum that made the pens in Coulson's pocket rattle.
"No," Raizer said. The word was a finality.
"Mr. Raizer, she's a potential threat-"
- Slurp~
Taking loud slurps, Raizer interrupted his self-righteous comments.
"She's a victim who was used as a battering ram against my property," Raizer spoke clearly, his voice dropping an octave. "You want Kilgrave? You have him. But she stays here until the fog clears. If you try to take her, I'll consider it your agency's ethics. And trust me, Coulson, once you lose your trust, you lose everything."
Coulson looked into Raizer's eyes and saw the same 'void' that had disturbed Professor Xavier. He saw a man who wasn't just refusing a request, but a man who was setting a boundary.
"Fine," Coulson conceded, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. "But we'll have a team stationed outside. If she wakes up and decides to finish what she started, we're moving in."
"If she wakes up and tries to finish it," Raizer muttered, looking at his ruined furniture, "she's going to need a medical facility. Not spies."
Coulson nodded slowly and retreated, leaving Raizer alone with the wreckage of his morning.
[HOST! Forget about your house. I know it hurts because you haven't paid off the mortgage yet.] The System popped up, its text flickering in a sympathetic blue. [Look on the bright side! You saved a soul! You defeated a villain! You've successfully asserted dominance over a government agency!]
"I had a week off," Raizer grumbled, leaning against the counter and watching Jessica's eyelids flutter. "I was going to catch up on my reading. I was going to reorganize my digital files. Now I have a broken door, a shattered kitchen, and a super-powered squatter."
He took a long sip of his coffee, feeling the warm liquid settle his nerves.
"Orario was simpler," he sighed. "In the Dungeon, at least the monsters didn't wear bespoke suits and try to talk to me. Moreover, I caused the chaos and others had to fix it. Now, I fix things. It's not fun."
Moreover, if he so desired, he could jump into the Dungeon and cut off contact with the world for an entire month. Here, even Hell was wire-tapped.
'No peace at all.'
His gaze fell on the photo frame near the door. It was damaged but the photo itself was fine.
"Should I give her a visit?"
"Urgh!"
The sound of the super-powered squatter stirring brought him back to the present. Jessica Jones clutched her head, her boots scuffing against the floorboards as she struggled to sit up.
"Where am I?" she rasped.
"In hell," Raizer replied flatly.
Jessica froze, her eyes widening as she took in the ruined apartment and the man standing over her like a grim reaper in a dress shirt. "I'm dead?"
"...Very much so."
Raizer took a long, slow 'Slurp~' from his mug, watching her panic with a clinical detachment.
[You're evil!]
'Hey, it's the weekend. I need some entertainment.'