Chapter 22 "The Wrath of Dark Angel"

Chapter 22
The Wrath of Dark Angel

After withdrawing the Earthing troops, the outcome is much much worse than the Generals expected.

Hundreds of the soldiers are severely wounded and need urgent medical treatment. Others are either missing or have been confirmed dead. Only less than one hundred per one General’s troops are back up ready to fight back.

The Earth is still engulfed in darkness; thanks to the power of Dark Angel. As long as it remains, no one can go through at all and invade the small blue planet anytime soon.

Even so, they still need medical troops, but they are still on Earth and cannot get through the Dark Angel’s Shield either.

“Here is the plan,” Tezuka says. “The Generals and their troops need to distract the Volesmashians in order to stall time so that the Dark Team will figure out how to break through the shield… once they do…”

The President of Earth glances at Siko and Katuo. “You find Ketsu fast. Do everything to calm him down and get him to revert the Shield back to Level 1.”

“What level is it now?” Katuo asks.

Ryu scratches the back of his head nervously and looks away from the teenagers. “Level 5. It’s at the max. The Shield has five layers, so that clearly makes it impossible for us to contact anyone on Earth.”

“That explains the reason why Hikyou-sama can't reach out to Ketsu.” Siko gives a light sigh. “My cousin is always overreacting, isn’t he?”

“Knapp, what is the location of your team?” Tezuka asks.

“They are waiting in the dock. My spaceship got attached to the ISS when we landed.” Knapp flashes a big grin. “Hope you don’t mind!”

“Well, then… Introduce them to Katuo and Siko. As for the rest of us…” Tezuka turns to the Generals. “We kick some asses!”

<3<3<3

“Finally! What took you so long?” A blonde-haired woman places his hand on her hips with a scowl on her face. Her blue eyes spot two certain teenagers catching up with Knapp. “Oh, who are the cuties behind you?”

“Hi, Clear.” Knapp chuckles light-heartedly. He pats with both of his hands on Katuo’s and Siko’s backs. “They are Katuo Kejinto and Siko Mitsukai. They are Dark and Light Gods.”

“Oh my! Please excuse me for being rude!” Clear cheerfully waves her hand. “I’m Clear Dawn. It's finally nice to meet you!"

“I wondered why the boy with black hair is scowling. I guess that must be a Kejinto thing, eh?” A tall man with short brown hair laughs out loud. He places his hands into his jeans’ pockets, under the hem of his long, bright green Hawaiian shirt. “My name is Johnny Shiba.”

“Hi there! I’m Jade Wolf!” A short man with near-medium black hair with a few bangs in different sizes in the front of his forehead, covering a little of his purple eyes, exclaims in excitement.

“And, this is Logy Oib. Please don’t mind his silence. He is deaf.” Knapp places his hand on the shoulder of the last man on his team. “But don’t underestimate him! He is stronger than he looks!”

Logy glances his hazel eyes towards Katuo and Siko. He nods his head with a small smile, as if he is greeting in his own way.

He doesn’t look strong, and he looks a little too thin to be muscular. Katuo thinks to himself. But I’m sensing something unusually powerful coming from him.

“Let’s go, shall we?” Knapp says cheerfully, already heading straight for a row of space cars, in various sizes and colors. He chooses a large black one, which is similar to a SUV. Everyone gets in the car. After he asks for the hatch door to open through the radio communication, the door automatically opens.

The space car lifts by itself and hovers in the air. It then launches itself into space towards the blackened Earth until it stops instantly above the black surface.

“I’m going first.” Knapp cracks his own knuckles before he takes off his scarf. Almost instantly, a bright white energy takes over his entire body, but it then turns black. Katuo and Siko realize that whiteness and blackness keep flipping forth and back to each other.

A black star-shaped mark on the back of Knapp’s neck is glowing in a bright light. Knapp opens his dark brown eyes, which get drowned by the clash of the light and darkness. They do not mix but rather, they constantly fight each other and are trying to balance out each other.

“You think you’re going to break the Dark Angel’s Shield by yourself?” Johnny places his hands on the back of his own head, his fingers locking each other. “Have you forgotten that he kicked your ass last time?”

Knapp laughs lightly. “I want to give it a try by myself!” He turns back to the black surface of the Earth. He leans forward a little over the edge of the space car. “Ready or not, Ketsu… Here I come!”

He jumps off the car, allowing the powerful gravity of Earth to pull himself towards the black surface. He lifts one of his feet above his own head, his leg straightening in the air. The universe energy that surrounds his body then goes into his feet, dissipating the aura completely and returning his eyes to normal dark brown color.

Siko and Katuo almost shudder at a rapidly-increasing power inside Knapp’s foot.

“Axe of Fifth Universe!” Knapp yells when he gets close enough to the black surface. With an axe kick, He then hits it hard with his foot hard, and then just within one second, the first layer of the Dark Angel’s Shield instantly breaks into trillions of pieces.

“A-amazing…!” Siko says.

“Let’s not celebrate just yet. We still have four layers to break.” Jade gives a light chuckle. He leans a little over the space car and waves his hands as he yells, “Knapp, do you need our help?!”

Knapp wipes dust off his shoulders. He barely hears one of his comrades’ voices and looks back up at the tiny space car. He realizes that he is even further; about 1,500 feet away by then.

He gives them a smirk and then begins to stretch every limb of his body for the next few minutes.

“Looks like he doesn’t need us.” Johnny yawns loudly.

“Showoff.” Jade crosses his arms with a pout on his face, making Clear giggle.

Knapp kneels down with two hands and one knee on the black surface. He lifts his hips a little higher than his entire body. He takes one more deep breath before he takes off running fast across the surface.

“What is he doing?” Katuo asks, his dark green eyes still on Knapp so he does not lose him. Especially when Knapp is probably as fast as an airplane. 

The Universe Warrior’s body begins to glow in bright light. He suddenly leaps across the surface. The light, which has covered his body, goes into one spot; his fist. He begins laughing when he feels his body dropping towards the dark surface.

Clear giggles at her leader’s laughter and says, “He is having fun.”

As soon as Knapp’s fist connects to the black surface, it begins cracking loudly. A single crack turns into millions of cracks all over the surface until it breaks into millions and millions of pieces. Knapp lands gracefully on the third black surface.

“Katuo, are you noticing something?” Siko leans a little over the edge of the space car. “That… universe energy, isn’t it?”

Katuo narrows his dark green eyes, trying to see the energy being drawn to Knapp’s glowing fist. He recalls the last time when Knapp used his leg to break the first layer of the Dark Angel’s Shield. “When he broke the first layer… he drew the energy into his foot and then released it into an attack, didn’t he?”

“Yes, exactly! It’s like recycling, isn’t it? It’s like… He took the energy and then gave it back, right?” Siko asks.

“You’re amazing!” Jade gasps lightly. “The way you described how Knapp used the universe energy is correct. He never attempted to waste the universe energy at all - after all, the Fifth Universe is already fragile. Basically, Knapp borrows the energy from the Fifth Universe and then gives it back once he finishes using it.”

“Heads up!” Clear yells suddenly, making all others look up only to find hundreds of Volesmashian soldiers riding their space jets.

“What?! What the hell are Tezuka and Ryu doing?!” Jade cries in panic.

Logy suddenly leaps out of the space car, going higher and higher towards the enemy soldiers. He raises one of his hands, which then gets covered with a purple glow.

A few dozens of the soldiers quickly grab their necks, choking loudly. One of them keeps pointing at his own helmet until his face turns completely blue. The rest of the enemies stop at a safe distance from the Dark Team, especially Logy who seems to have the power to remove oxygen from their comrades’ helmets.

Logy’s hazel eyes keep shifting right and left, as if he is trying to concentrate on every single soldier. He frowns in concern as he turns to look back at Katuo and Siko. “Hm?”

He closes his eyes and releases a sigh.

“Why did he stop? What is he doing?” Siko asks curiously.

“He’s transferring something to our minds. An important piece of information, I hope,” Jade answers. “What he is using is called the power of mind He has the ability to read people’s thoughts and to transfer words into our heads.”

“Seems like Volesmash has a revenge…” Johnny turns to Katuo and Siko. “They are attacking Earth because of you.”

“What did we do?” Katuo asks.

It was the third Gods. They tried to help a planet to improve their economy only to get Volesmash to decline in their economy. It was never their intention to do so, but Volesmash had been blaming them for a long time. Somehow they found out that you are on Earth, so they are attacking in order to lure you out.

“I forgot that Double God could speak to you too.” Jade laughs after Siko repeats what Hikyou-sama says. He begins to crack his knuckles. “Well, then… it’s my turn!”

He jumps out of the space car and hovers in the vast space. He looks up at the soldiers who are still being gathered.  He then glides his arm at his chest level from his side to another, creating a transparent liquid out of nowhere from his arm. He yells, “Water Bullets!”

The liquid splits into thousands in various shapes and sizes of bullets. Jade grins widely before he commands, “Gravity x 1/100!”

The water bullets suddenly get impacted by an invisible shock and fly fast toward the soldiers who quickly take out and fire their weapons, but some of them are too late when they get hit by the strong water attacks.

Some of the soldiers quickly get past Logy and Jade, heading straight for Earth only to be stopped by a large earth wall that appears out of nowhere. The wall goes all over half of the blue planet.

“What?!” one of the soldiers cries.

“Sorry! Your opponents are the Dark Team.” Clear is hovering in the front of the earth wall with a grin on her face. She lightly tosses a rock, which then falls back on her hand. “I found two pieces of earth that came from this planet… I just figured I could make them bigger, right?”

The soldiers look at each other in confusion.

“Ten Times Size!” Clear throws the rock hard at them. The rock grows bigger and bigger, but the soldiers do not realize what is exactly happening until a couple of them get hit by the large rock, being knocked away into space.

“That’s… the power of Dark Team,” Siko says in amazement. “Looks like they don’t need us, after all.”

Katuo nods his head in agreement. He glances at the sleeping figure. “Johnny, why are you sleeping?!”

“Like you said before, they don’t need us.” Johnny yawns tiredly before he lazily turns over on his side, not bothering to open his eyes at all.

“K-Katuo!” Siko cries in panic, drawing Katuo’s attention right away as he points his finger at a bright light in the dark space.

“What is it?” Katuo narrows his eyes, trying to get a better image of the light.

“That’s probably why Ketsu set up the Dark Angel’s Shield in the first place…” Siko glances nervously at the blackened Earth. “It is a meteor.”

“What?! Where the hell did it come from?”

“Ugh… It’s one of the Volesmash’s attacks,” Johnny mumbles sleepily and stretches out his body. He rubs his eyes and says, “It’s my turn.”

He gets on the edge of the space car and glances at the meteor growing bigger and bigger the closer it approaches. He yawns and then places his hands into his jeans pockets. He gracefully leaps from the space car and creates a bright yellow orb without lifting his hands.

He swiftly kicks the orb towards the fast-approaching meteor and then yawns once again. He turns to the exposed, darkened Earth and takes his hands out of his pockets. He says sleepily, “Wall of Steel.”

A literal wall of steel comes out of nothingness and covers the other half of Earth along with Clear’s wall of earth.

As soon as the yellow energy ball touches the meteor, the huge explosion with a quarter size of the Sun comes following afterward. A powerful shockwave sends everything and everybody away from the explosion. Thousands of smaller pieces of meteor come flying all over the area. The majority crashes into the earth and steel walls, giving no damage to the blue planet.

<3<3<3

Katuo opens his dark green and shakes his head trying to get rid of double vision. “Siko? Are you ok?”

“Y-Yeah.” Siko rubs his throbbing head for a hard hit against the space car’s window during the explosion. “Where are we now?”

Bright light comes into their sights, making them close their eyes once again. Katuo blinks his eyes and says softly, “I don’t know.”

You’re near the orbit of Mercury.

“What?!” Katuo yells in panic. “It’s no wonder that the Sun looks bigger than before!”

“We came this far?” Siko asks worriedly, as he takes a look at the panel to notice that the fuel is empty. “But how are we supposed to get back?!”

“That’s why we should have gone with solar energy.” Katuo smacks himself in the forehead. I can finally see why Tezuka was trying to get Earth to switch over to renewable energy for a while… but the oil industry wouldn’t be having it at all.

Forget about the space vehicle. Use your light energy, Siko.

“What?” Siko blinks in confusion.

How long does it take for the light to reach Earth from the Sun?

“Eight minutes and twenty seconds,” Katuo answers right away only to get an awed stare from Siko. “What? What was I supposed to do besides reading while I was out of school?”

“Hikyou-sama, what does my light energy have to do anything with your question?” Siko scratches the back of his head.

The only power that is much faster than the power of rush… is light. The speed of rush is nothing compared to the speed of light.

“Oh! I remember now! There was one time that Tezuka challenged me to a race… He lost to me and never asked me again.” Siko lightly thumps his fist on his other palm.

“But can we survive in space without oxygen for about ten minutes?” Katuo frowns in concern.

<3<3<3

“What was that?” Knapp asks, as he looks up at the wall of metal. He recently heard a loud explosion outside, but he could not see anything past the steel wall. 

The walls of steel and earth begin to dematerialize into nothingness, revealing large clouds of smoke that have been resulted from the recent explosion.

“W-where is everyone?” He frowns. He turns on his small device that is attached to his ear from inside his shirt. “Where are you, Jade? Clear? Johnny?”

He quickly turns around as soon as he senses a fast-approaching presence until he spots a spot that seems to be waving. He raises an eyebrow at the odd waving-like spot on the black surface until the tip of a blade emerges from the spot. He narrows his dark eyes and asks softly, “Ketsu?”

Ketsu takes his time to pull himself out of the barrier, and his angry face does not change even after he looks at Knapp. When he steps off the waving spot, he points his sword at it. The moving spot disappears back into the solid surface.

“Well, there you are, Ketsu!” Knapp says cheerfully, waving his hand. “What happened? Did something scare you enough to make the barrier go up to the maximum level?”

“Where are Katuo and Siko?” Ketsu ignores his father’s questions. “Why are you breaking my shield?”

Knapp flashes a big grin on his face. “Aha, so you were worried, after all! As you can see, we can’t get into Earth because of your shield. We have been looking for you…”

Ketsu removes his wristband and tosses it across the surface. The pair of dark blue wings appears on his back and open widely, ripping two new holes off the back of his shirt. He lightly taps the tip of his blade onto the surface.

“Eh?!” Knapp’s feet suddenly get sucked into the black surface. “Ketsu?!”

Another explosion booms across the vast space, but Ketsu does not even flinch at the sudden loud noise.

“Ketsu… What are you doing?” Knapp asks nervously when Ketsu tightens his grip on his sword. He looks around at the third black layer of Dark Angel’s Shield. “There's no reason for us to fight, Ketsu.”

Ketsu briefly glances at the war zone between the Earthling and Volesmashian troops right outside Earth. He coldly asks again, “Where are Dark and Light Gods?”

“That’s, uhhh… I… The thing is…” Knapp scratches the back of his head. “We lost each other.”

Ketsu quickly points his sword upward at the space. Enormous black energy comes flowing out of his sword, creating two new layers above the Mitsukai father and son.

“Why?” Knapp frowns in confusion but realizes as soon as he recognizes Ketsu’s angry eyes. He sighs lightly and places his hands on his hips. “You are still mad at me?”

“You abandoned me when you dropped me off here with my sister.” Ketsu thrusts his sword harshly half-through the black surface. “So of course yes, I am furious at you.”

“Stop it. You are putting everyone in danger --” Knapp quickly bends his body backward closer to the surface, evading Ketsu’s fast sword attack completely. “Hey, hey! We shouldn’t fight!”

“Leave, then!” Ketsu does not even stop his continuous attacks when he is thrusting his sword towards Knapp’s chest, but the Universe Warrior manages to pull his feet out of the black surface, two small holes behind, and easily evades the sword attack. “We don’t need you…! Earth is safe with me!”

“Yet you locked out the Earth President!” Knapp stomps one of his feet on the surface hard, breaking it completely into pieces. Afterward, they easily jump down until they land safely on the next black barrier. “Without the world leader… how else Earth is supposed to be safe… from its own destruction?!”

Ketsu scowls even deeper and yells as loud as possible, “Shut up!”

The Mitsukai father quickly braces himself with his own arms when the son releases a powerful shockwave from his own body all over the area. He flashes a big grin on his face and says cheerfully, “I got to be honest with you… You certainly got stronger a lot while I was gone! But…”

The Dark Angel rushes off, heading straight for his father. He lifts his sword above his head, about to strike down Knapp.

With a smirk on his face, the Universe Warrior quickly moves aside, evading another sword strike. After earning Ketsu’s surprised look on his face, Knapp swiftly kneels him in the stomach hard watching as his son spits up blood.

Ketsu collapses to his knees, dropping his sword in the process. He wraps his arms around his own stomach and closes one of his eyes in pain.

Knapp stretches one of his arms as he finishes his sentence. “I had fought opponents who were much stronger than you are.”

Before the Dark Angel can get up and continue fighting, his head gets smashed into the fourth black surface. Another shockwave from the impact completely breaks the surface into even smaller pieces.

They have reached the level of cumulonimbus clouds when they get to the last remaining barrier of the Dark Angel’s Shield.

Ketsu grunts painfully when he places his hand on his face only to feel something wet and red sliding down. He gives his father a dirty look, clenching his jaw out of frustration. Is… Is this my limit? But why?! I am supposed to be the Dark Angel!

He calmly picks up his sword and gets up from the floor of the barrier. He lifts his sword once again, sending enormous amounts of black energy.

“What?” Knapp asks as he watches two new barriers being created once again. He glances back at his son, who is panting heavily. “But why? It took way too much energy for you to create the Shield. Have you forgotten that we are still fighting the enemy- Volesmash? Or are you giving up your life?”

Ketsu collapses to one of his knees, trying to take a few deep breaths. 

Knapp gives a light sigh as he places his palms on his hips. “That’s enough. We don’t need to fight each other any longer. Can you please let us through? The Earthling medical troops need to get through the Shield. Earth needs their President… also, Katuo and Siko are waiting for you.”

Ketsu widens his eyes at the mention of the new Gods, but he frowns a few seconds later. He says so quietly that Knapp barely hears him, “I’ve been waiting for you for my whole life.”

Knapp flinches.

“But that no longer matters to me.” Ketsu carefully stands up with his trembling legs, trying not to collapse again. “As long as I have Siko and Katuo, I don’t really care.”

He is so focused on standing on his two feet that he does not hear his father approaching. He almost jumps startled when he gets pulled into a warm embrace.

“I’m sorry, son,” Knapp whispers. His fresh tears are sliding down his face. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea that leaving you alone affected you so much. I’m so sorry.”

Ketsu bites his bottom lip, trying to hold back tears but miserably failing to. Tears are freely falling down from his eyes.