"Rural areas are the bad part again, huh? People in this world should move to the big cities" Kaito joked while looking at the small town around him.
In a town so small and full of people who all knew each other, two strangers like them naturally stood out. Their appearance did not help either, so everyone looked at them with suspicion as they walked.
"Where are we going?" Shiho asked, since she was actually just following Kaito without any real destination.
"Actually... right here" Kaito replied as he stopped in front of an old style family house and knocked on the door.
TOC TOC TOC
Only a few seconds passed before the sound of the latch moving could be heard, and then the door opened.
As soon as she stepped out, the woman who owned the house looked at them strangely for a second, not recognizing them, before asking,
"Do you need something?"
"We are looking for Mike, is he here?" Kaito asked naturally.
"Mike? Why would you be looking for my...?"
Click.
While the woman was speaking, Kaito heard a faint click from a door.
Before the woman finished saying the word "son", Kaito and Shiho were no longer there.
From the woman's perspective they suddenly disappeared the moment she blinked.
Not knowing whether she had just seen something incredible or if she had simply imagined everything and no one had ever been there, the woman looked around in confusion for a few seconds before murmuring,
"I think I need to rest a little more" she said while holding her head.
---
"Come on, run."
Several dozen meters behind the house, Mike was running quickly in the opposite direction from his home while holding the hand of a little girl with short hair who seemed unable to speak.
They entered the forest, trying to lose their pursuers.
"How did they find us so fast?" he muttered while continuing to run.
FWAAA.
"I am not with the group chasing you" Kaito said as he appeared in front of them, blocking their path.
Mike was surprised by the sudden appearance, but the little girl reacted far more intensely.
She immediately let go of Mike's hand and stepped back in fear.
"Special... abilities" she muttered while retreating.
Not being used to the forest terrain, she tripped and fell to the ground.
Clearly, seeing another person with abilities triggered some kind of trauma in her.
Without worrying about the fall, she placed her hands over her ears and closed her eyes as if trying to isolate herself from the world.
Kaito approached her and activated the demon king aura on allies to calm her down.
The girl's whimpers slowly began to fade until her face returned to a relatively calm state. Once her condition stabilized, Kaito slowly approached her and placed a hand on her head.
"What are you doing? Let her go" Mike shouted.
"It is fine, I will not hurt her" Kaito said, then repeated more gently for the girl, "I will not hurt you, understand?"
After what felt like several minutes of complete silence, the girl took the hand resting on her head and held it with both hands while nodding.
"Alright, what is your name?"
"Eleven" she whispered weakly.
"Good, Eleven, you have abilities like me, right?"
Eleven nodded.
"The bad men gave you those abilities, right?"
"Yes."
"Those bad men are my enemies. I need to find them to teach them a lesson. Do you think you can take me to them?"
"No" Eleven immediately shook her head. "They... are very dangerous."
"It is fine, look at this."
Kaito pointed a finger toward a nearby group of trees. The ground opened and all the trees fell out by their roots. A few small movements later made the roots, branches, and leaves completely removed and replanted.
Then the trunks were divided by air cuts into perfectly equal boards that were finally joined together to build a small wooden cabin in the middle of the new clearing.
"Incredible." Mike, still a child who was easily impressed, marveled at the house instead of being scared by the abilities.
Eleven was not different, although her surprise came from Kaito's abilities.
"See? I am stronger than the bad guys, can you take me there?"
"...Alright" Eleven finally nodded after thinking for a while. Kaito sighed in satisfaction.
...
Holding Eleven's hand, Kaito walked along a street that seemed increasingly abandoned before finally entering the forest.
Since he was walking at the pace of two children, it took quite a while. Only after more than an hour did they finally arrive at an extremely suspicious facility in the forest.
If I had known they were this obvious I would have just searched on my own, Kaito thought.
Since they had managed to hide even from his skill "Evil", he thought they would be much more concealed.
But it was not the time to regret it. He turned toward Eleven and spoke.
"Alright, can you stay here with the big sister? She will take good care of you in the meantime."
"I stay here too?" Shiho said in surprise.
"Unless you can prevent the mental invasion of what exists in there, then yes, you stay here. Take care of the kids" Kaito replied.
"But what if someone appears and tries to kill us?"
"Do not worry, with just one day of being dead I should be able to resurrect the three of you" Kaito joked, but when Shiho pointed at the children who were looking at him in fear, Kaito had no choice but to give in. "It is a joke, do not worry, you will be safe. There is no one around, the entire facility is empty. I am not here for it itself, but for the portal. And I assure you that whatever is inside there will be busy enough that it will not be able to divert its attention to anything else.
Anyway, if you see that I take too long, go back to the town. Remember that Mike is almost a child we kidnapped."
"I was not kidnapped, I came because I want to protect Eleven" Mike said after hearing their conversation.
"Exactly, make sure you tell that to the police." Kaito gave Mike a thumbs up before saying goodbye to Shiho and Eleven and entering the place.
---
Inside the laboratory everything was in ruins.
It looked like there had been a fight recently where the entire area was not just collateral damage, but rather the attacker's weapon itself.
Among flickering lights and destroyed walls, Kaito simply kept walking without encountering anyone for a while.
Finally, inside a room, he found an ominous crack in the wall with a reddish orange light that emitted a strange energy.
Kaito recognized this energy as the same one he felt in the town from Another.
"Death energy" he murmured while crossing the portal.
Kaito did not feel much when crossing the portal. Something tried to enter his mind, but his mind expelled it faster, so Kaito almost did not even notice.
Once inside, he found himself in an environment that was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
They were exactly the same facilities he had crossed earlier, with the difference that everything was reversed and in perfect condition.
"This is far too well constructed for everything to have happened after Eleven opened the portal while escaping.
And years have passed since the objects fell.
So within the lore of this world, Eleven must not be the only person capable of creating entrances to the Upside Down" Kaito analyzed.
Even so, in all the time he searched he did not find anything similar, so even if there are more people with abilities, they must still be relatively few.
While Kaito walked down the white hallway, footsteps were heard behind him.
Turning around, he found a large man wearing overalls and a hockey mask on his face, holding a blood stained machete.
"Jason" Kaito muttered as he recognized the enemy. "Looks like I arrived at the right place" Kaito smiled after finally finding the origin of the supernatural stalkers that had not left him alone this whole time.
Without saying anything, obviously, Jason advanced straight forward, with an imposing presence and hurried steps that made him seem unstoppable as he moved toward his target.
But his target, Kaito, was not a normal person. As soon as Jason raised the machete and brought it down toward him, Kaito easily held it and grabbed his arm, preventing him from moving.
Jason tried to use his other arm to grab Kaito, but before he could do it Kaito kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backward at high speed and tearing off his left arm in the process.
Before he could hit the wall behind him, Kaito appeared behind him and grabbed him by the neck.
Before Jason could try to free himself, Kaito incinerated him completely and repeated the process with his arm.
He had only moved about three meters forward, without even leaving the room, when a door opened to his right and another famous killer came out.
A large man with a blue mechanic jumpsuit and an expressionless white mask.
"Michael Myers? Seriously?"
This time he did not wait for him to do anything. He simply made a gesture with his hand and flames rose from beneath the psychiatric patient, incinerating him completely without even leaving ashes.
Kaito knew these usually survived things that would kill anyone else or regenerated from whatever body part remained, so he made sure there was no body for them to return from.
The next one, who appeared seconds later, was no longer human. With a wrinkled demonic face, an old hat, and a long coat, the Creeper spread his wings and flew toward Kaito while licking his lips hungrily.
Kaito let him move toward him while conjuring a spear of ice. The Creeper, moving at full speed toward him, was pierced by the spear and impaled against the wall behind him.
While he unsuccessfully tried to remove it, Kaito approached him and made the same movement as the previous two times, and while doing so he heard two peculiar sounds behind him.
A semi constant groan, like that of a woman whose throat is destroyed and cannot speak, and the static sound of an old television.
"These are not even alive anymore" Kaito muttered, realizing they had decided to change tactics.
But it did not matter. Simple holy magic made both spirits howl in pain on the spot.
Kayako, the pale woman in white, simply moaned as she completely faded away without making any movement.
Sadako, on the other hand, did not groan in pain. Her body began to turn into static as she disappeared.
Kaito recognized that she was trying to escape, so he focused specifically on her, surrounding the room with holy energy so she could not escape and destroying the cameras around, the only digital devices he found.
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(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)