The thoughts flickered through her mind; her fist clenched softly for only a moment before she turned and smiled coquettishly at Ryuk.
"Actually, never mind..."
"You sure?" he asked, pretty sure she had something to say, but she nodded.
"Can I have your Comm number instead?" she asked as Ryuk brought out his Amma comms and she quickly scanned it.
"I can’t promise always to be available, though," She shrugged, replying:
"Just send a reply whenever you find the message."
A satisfying beep sounded, and he watched as a new message profile appeared on his panel, none other than Morgaine.
"Your evolution, when are you starting?" she said.
"The earlier the better," he replied, and she slid off of him.
"Then go, while it still doesn’t hurt to part from you. Don’t take too long, okie?" she said when Ryuk suddenly leaned into her.
Her hands gently gripped his waist, pulling him into an embrace.
Their eyes met for a moment; pink blush rose on both their cheeks from the passionate stare before he leaned in, kissing her softly.
"I’ll be back soon," he said.
In the next moment, he stepped back and his image faded into motes of purple light.
A powerful breeze swept across the space, sending her gown and hair streaming backward.
"I believe you."
_______________
It didn’t take up to ten minutes before Ryuk was back at the bunker.
He moved closer and was about to order the door opened when he suddenly stopped in place, like someone frozen in time.
[Extremely Powerful Anomalous Entities Detected.]
In that instant, his neck jerked up into the sky, his gaze locking on a particular point.
An ordinary person wouldn’t have seen anything wrong, but Ryuk’s hands moved to the side, and a gem appeared, white in color.
His tattoos changed color to white, and then, the image of a phantom lantern manifested.
He spun the lantern in his hands before flinging it forward toward that point in space.
Halfway there, the lantern phantom was blown into motes of light by an invisible ripple, but at the same time, it exploded, sending forth an arch of light that illuminated the area and shattered the illusion.
At first, there was just a regular patch of sky.
The next moment, a gigantic otherworldly object — a cross — stood where the sky had been.
’Just what is that?’
Ryuk thought, confused, studying the humongous cross whose surface was etched in runes that rippled with a familiar rainbow-like energy.
[It’s a God Ship.]
Ryuk spoke a moment later.
"Are you going to come out or not?"
The outer layer of the cross opened, and three beings stepped out, their sight making his brow crease.
There were two males and a single female, all with shoulder-length rainbow-colored hair; their skin shimmering in the same rainbow hue.
Their eyes were a kaleidoscope of color that gave Ryuk the illusion of staring into an endless abyss.
The resemblance to Iris was uncanny; in a way, he had expected them.
They walked on air to stand a few meters before him.
The female pointed a finger at him, and words rang telepathically in his head:
"You Have What Is One of Ours..."
He gave a silent hmm.
In the next moment, he communicated telepathically with Zafree.
It had not even been five seconds when the glass-like surface of the sea beneath his feet suddenly parted.
Iris immediately jumped out of the water, only to be grabbed by Ryuk as a coquettish giggle escaped her lips.
She tried to sneak in a kiss when he caught her, but he dodged quickly.
Still, she kept edging closer, offering a few more tries before he finally caught her jaw in his hold.
"I told you to stop sneaking in kisses!"
"Hmpf!" she pouted, finally giving it up.
Then Zafree’s voice echoed, shakily.
"And who are they?"
Iris’s brow scrunched.
She turned to look where Zafree was pointing, eyes widening; her small lips parted when she saw them, words escaping her:
"Zoe Moe Loren?"
It was a language Ryuk couldn’t understand.
As if in reply, the three individuals’ eyebrows quivered repeatedly.
He sensed an almost impossible ripple in the air flowing toward Iris, but in the next instant, his hand shifted into scaly white claws, and he slashed forward.
RIIIIIIIIIIIP
Space slashed open, a chasm appearing and destroying the incoming ripples.
"Do you know these people, Iris?" Ryuk sent telepathically, but then he noticed something abnormal: Iris was no longer in his arms.
His eyes widened as he turned forward and saw something rippling gently toward him, a soft, feminine palm slowly crossing through space and reaching for his chest.
His hands reached out to halt it in its path, but the panel suddenly blinked.
[DODGE!]
Immediately, Ryuk tried to shift, only to find himself moving with a slowness his mind couldn’t register.
In the least second, his motion to dodge changed to blocking, as he quickly crossed both arms together.
Then, all of a sudden, the world blurred almost as if reality were a signal and he had been momentarily disconnected from it.
The palm covered in rainbow light that had been heading for him — he didn’t know what happened to it.
Did it attack him?
Was he able to dodge out of its range?
Did he block it?
All he felt upon waking was silence.
The world stopped blurring.
When Ryuk’s eyes fully cleared, he found himself surrounded by a sea of purple, sleeping inside the sea floor.
His lips parted, and then,
GUURRRRGGLLLLE
The sound of purple water mixing as blood burst from his lips.
An excruciating, mind-numbing pain, a twist toward insanity, hit him like a fast-moving jet.
He felt his own arms and realized a horror:
The flesh was completely gone, reduced to crushed bones barely held together by tiny strands of a purple-white semi-solid object.
The left side of his chest was gone, replaced with a gaping hole still bearing the imprint of a palm.
Only now did he understand what had happened.
He had tried to dodge as the system advised, but he realized he wouldn’t be able to, due to the weird flow of time.
In the end, he had crossed his arms, and when the palm landed, it had blown his flesh off and crushed his arms completely before smashing straight into his chest and ripping out from his back.
The force of the attack was so powerful that it slammed him into the sea and blasted him deep into the sandy surface, about 50 kilometers deep in an instant!
One palm, one strike, and it all ended!