---5 minutes ago---

  Yui ran

  Her boots pounded against the hallway floor, breath sharp in her chest, each exhale fogging faintly

  She didn't know why but all her instincts were screaming at her, pulling her in this Direction. She had no idea why.

  Maybe it was cause she was an angel gear, she had heard that angel gears felt a pull towards sins, which is why there have been so fewer sins nowadays than there used to be.

  She rounded a corner too fast, shoulder clipping the wall. Pain flared bright and hot, but it barely registered. Her vision tunneled. Somewhere far behind her the dancer girl from the roof was still calling after her—“Hey! Wait up! You okay?!”—but the words sounded distant, muffled, like they were coming from underwater.

  Suddenly she was forced to duck as a bullet punched through the wall next to her.

  A couple more bullets punched through the wall as Malik walked out through the whole.

  The dark skinned boy walked through the hole made in the wall, rubbing his jaw.

  Malik looked down at her.

  She was crouched low, one arm over her head, eyes wide, breathing hard like she’d been sprinting for her life—which, judging by the holes in the wall behind her, she had.

  “…The hell are you doing?” he asked, voice rough, still a little slurred from the kick to the jaw.

  "You almost shot me!"

  "Hm then you shouldn't have ducked" he said jokingly, though he noticed the look on her face was far from amused "I was kidding. Besides if you haven't noticed yet the doors are fucked so I had to blow my way through the wall"

  Yui wiped her sleeve across her forehead, still catching her breath. "More like felt one." She swallowed hard. "Something’s wrong. Really wrong. I don’t know how to explain it, but-"

  Her words cut off as the hallway lights flickered violently. once, twice, before plunging them into darkness.

  Malik’s fingers settled on the trigger of his guns, ready to shoot whatever was coming from the other side.

  Suddenly, the sin from before rushed towards the group, tongue out like a madman. "Finally, hot ladies!"

  Before the sin could get any closer, it was shot through the chest by a bullet from Malik.

  The bullet tore through the Sin's chest with a wet thud, sending it staggering back, but it didn't go down.

  Instead, its too-wide grin stretched further, tongue lolling grotesquely as it chuckled. "Fun little fact about sins, we can't feel pain"

  Malik didn't lower his gun. "Tch. Why do all of them keep saying that. "

  The Sin's eyes looked between the group of similar age people in front of it, then it's eyes locked onto yui with a look of slight terror, and it stepped back a little out of caution"You... smell different. Like... angel blood."

  Yui froze.

  Malik stepped in front of her, gun at the ready. "Back. Off."

  The thing whipped it's tongue out at them, but Malik shot the tongue away from them, even as it split into three

  The bullet sheared one of the tongues cleanly in half while the other two just had holes put in them

  Black ichor sprayed across the wall, hissing faintly as it hit the floor. The severed length thrashed like a dying snake before dissolving into tar-like sludge.

  The Sin shrieked, not in pain, but in rage.

  “You little-!”

  Malik fired again.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  And again.

  The shots tore through the Sin’s torso, ripping open muscle and bone, blasting chunks of flesh free. Any normal body would’ve collapsed into meat and blood.

  The Sin staggered but stayed standing.

  Its chest knit itself together grotesquely, ribs crawling back into place beneath translucent skin.

  The Sin rolled its shoulders, bones popping loudly as if settling back into alignment. The holes in its body sealed shut, leaving behind only smeared black stains.

  It jumped.

  Malik shoved Yui sideways just as the Sin’s tongue speared through the space where her head had been a heartbeat before. The impact shattered the light fixture behind them, glass raining down as the hallway plunged into deeper darkness, lit only by emergency strobes flashing red.

  Malik fired blind as he moved, muzzle flashes strobing the hallway red-white-red. The Sin twisted between shots with insane malleability, its spine bending the in an uncanny way as bullets tore past. One round clipped its shoulder, blowing a chunk free. But that didn't even slow the thing down.

  “Stay behind me!” Malik barked.

  Yui scrambled back, boots skidding on shattered glass. Her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest. Her common sense was telling her to run or something, she had absolutely no control over her abilities and no training, it only made sense to run away, find someone to help or something... But her Instincts.

  Her instincts were telling her to fight the sin in front of her, her instincts were telling her to kill it. It was weird, she'd expected to feel... Terrified. But no it was like... It felt like she was excited. Like in front of her was some kinda opportunity to fill a void she'd never noticed before.

  The Sin laughed, wet and breathless. “Cute. You think bullets-”

  Malik cut it off with a shot straight through its jaw.

  The lower half of the Sin’s face exploded. Teeth and black ichor sprayed the wall. For half a second, it looked like it might finally fall.

  Then the jaw grew back.

  Cartilage stretched, bone knitting together with sickening pops. The Sin flexed its mouth experimentally, tongue slithering out again. longer now, barbed along the edges.

  The Sin rushed forward way faster than Malik had expected

  Malik fired point-blank. The shots punched through its abdomen, but it slammed into him anyway. The impact sent Malik skidding across the floor, shoulder-first into the wall hard enough to crack tile.

  His gun clattered away.

  “Malik!” Yui shouted.

  The Sin loomed over him, tongue rising like a spear. "Thanks a lot, that white haired kid did a number on me, and then you people showed up and I had no time to get back my strength. But now I'm back up and ready to kill"

  As his tongue went to attack the boy, a bright yellow light erupted, hitting him head on.

  It knocked the sin to the ground as his whole back had to start regenerating from the pain.

  It looked back to see what hit it

  Yui's hands shook violently as she held them up, her hands and eyes glowing a blinding yellow.

  She had no idea how she did that, it just kinda, Came naturally in front of the sin.

  She braced for a second, then started blasting again, the bright yellow beam covering the entire room in such bright light that it was blinding even from outside.

  After a few seconds of this, the girl stopped to see what she'd done. The sin was still alive, tho there wasn't much left of it. Half of it was completely torn up and broken. It wasn't like the body got burned, no it seemed more concussive force than heat.

  Upon seeing it still breathing she prepared a blast, tho not the same as before, Instead she made a finger gun. She aimed for the eyes.

  And the hallway lit up again as the blast took the Sin in the face, blowing one eye apart in a spray of black. It reeled back, screeching, clawing at its face as the regeneration lagged while trying to fix... everything else, it was regenerating just a fraction of a second too slow.

  Malik used that second.

  He kicked up from the floor, slamming his boot into the Sin’s knee as it tried to stand up. Bone snapped sideways. The sin collapsed with a howl, limbs tangling.

  He punched the thing in the face again before barely dodging another light blast aimed for the sin.

  Suddenly the girl who had been following yui rounded the corner, finally catching up, only to be confused to no end upon seeing... Whatever the hell was going on.

  Suddenly the sin saw the girl and let off an ominous smile. It had an excellent idea as it's tongue hit the last light in the hallway completely blackening the hallway.

  It didn't take long for yui to light up her hand like a glow stick, but before either of the two teens could do anything, the girl was dragged into the darkness.

  The scream came a half-second late.

  A sharp, tearing sound cutting through the darkness as the girl was yanked off her feet. Her hands scraped uselessly against the floor, nails shrieking as they left pale trails in the dust before she vanished completely into the dark behind them.

  “NO!” Yui shouted.

  Malik skidded to a stop, spinning back just in time to see the two disappear.

  Malik's hand clamped around Yui's wrist like a vise before she could lunge after them.

  "Don't," he growled.

  Yui whirled on him, eyes blazing—but Malik didn't flinch. His grip didn't loosen.

  "Let go-"

  "Do you even know where you're going? Or are you just planning on getting lost?"

  "Of course not. I.. I can feel him."

  "What?" Malik asked

  "It's like. I can sense the direction he is in." Yui said as she pointed in a direction.

  "Okay, guess I should add that to the list of bullshit superpowers" Malik said "what even was that back there?"

  "I don't know, I've never done anything like that before, it just kinda slipped out." She said looking at her hands, it was like she did it on instinct. In fact she was still riding the high from blasting that sin to high hell, it was... Terrifyingly satisfying.

  "Just… slipped out?" Malik asked, incredulous. He was still trying to wrap his head around what he'd just seen.

  Yui's gaze was glued to her hands, but she nodded. "Like… instinct. It just happened. I've never done anything like it before."

  "And now you wanna go charging in blind after that sin? Based off instinct?" Malik jerked his chin toward her glowing hand, still radiating faint yellow light.

  "Well... Yeah"

  "You know there's a word for that right? It's called suicide." The boy said, giving her an unimpressed look.

  She walked past, ignoring him. Walking in the direction she pointed earlier.

  Malik sighed, walking after her, trying to stop her would've probably been annoying and honestly he kinda wanted to go kill the thing too.

  They searched the building for 3 whole minutes,

  Yui leading the way with her hand held high like a makeshift lantern, casting erratic yellow glows that danced across peeling wallpaper and cracked concrete. It was pretty clear the sin had come through here

  "I thought you said it just, slipped out" Malik asked.

  "We've been walking for 3 minutes why are you just bringing this up now?"

  "Three minutes is about how long it takes me to decide if something's worth calling bullshit on," he said.

  "Pfft slow"

  "What was that."

  "Nothing nothing, I'm just saying that you're... A little slow on the uptake." She grinned as she looked back at him.

  "Why you little- huh!?"

  The boy was cut off as a cracking sound was heard over top of them. Suddenly the ceiling above them started breaking as cracks spider webbed outwards.

  Then it broke, sending dust and rubble down and covering the entire room making it impossible to see.

  Eventually the dust cleared and yui had a good look at the sin, very different from before. It was much bigger standing at about 7 foot 4, half of its face was the normal human face they'd seen just a couple minutes earlier, but now the other half, was the furry orange face of a tiger, looking at them predatorially.

  "Ah fuck" Malik cursed, but before either of the teens knew it, a hand clasped around both their faces as the sin blitzed them.

  Then it threw the both of them with enough power to send them crashing into the other side of the hallway with similar speed to a jet.

  It was at that very moment that liun and rissa had finally made their way up into the hallway through the window.

  The sin smiled seeing the white haired boy who humiliated him not even 20 minutes ago.

  Liun and rissa were paralyzed as the sin appeared behind them without either of them even being able to perceive it.

  It slammed it's fist into liun sending him crashing into the wall with enough force to crater it.

  It let off an ungodly smirk. There was no way it could be stopped now.