Content Warning: Sexual Assault
000
Daud was kissing me.
His hands were on my shoulders.
He had waited until we were alone in the shark tunnel, and prompted me to remove by disguise so he could kiss me.
After I processed what was happening, I pushed my hands into Daud's chest. At first he held firm, as I was too weak to move him one Planck length, but as I continued to shove, he released my lips and unhanded me.
"What's wrong?" Daud pointed his palms towards me as he half-shrugged.
"Why did you kiss me?" I texted as I wiped my lips on my sleeve.
"Because we were getting all romantic and everything."
"In what way were we 'getting all romantic'?"
"We were talking and getting along and laughing."
"And how is that romantic? We were just having a good time."
"But we're on a date right now."
"This isn't a date." I could feel the skin on my face scrunch up.
"We're a guy and a girl hanging out together at an aquarium. This is a date. It's our second. The museum date was our first." Daud spoke as if he were explaining the obvious to a child.
"The museum thing wasn't a date, and neither is this. I asked you out so I could ask you a serious question, remember?"
"Yeah, the reincarnation thing, and we bonded over that."
"Lisen." I held up a hand. "I must have sent some signals I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, genuinely, but I'm just not interested in you. I'm a lesbian, I only fucked men in my old life as part of a my job."
"What about before when I was explaining how you're a good person! Didn't that mean anything to you?" Daud's words came out more harshly than before.
"That was nice of you, but it doesn't mean I owe you anything." I took a step back. The blue color of the shark tunnel became oppressive.
"Are you serious? You were leading me on this whole time?" One of Daud's hands wrapped around the other and squeezed.
"I wasn't leading you on." I stepped back again. Daud took a step closer.
"You were teasing me this whole time, and now you won't even let me kiss you? It wasn't like I was truly to fuck you yet!" The air began to vibrate. All the sharks around us swam away.
"Was that all you wanted? Was that why you approached me originally? You just wanted to stick your dick in me?" My arms moved in front of me as if I were a boxer.
"I wanted to make you my girlfriend."
"You're dating Abriza!"
"And? I'm trying to have a harem!"
"Are you for fucking real?"
"Bitch, my old life was pathetic! I didn't get any pussy, and I was depressed, and lonely, and weak! Now I'm living the dream! I'm strong! I'm important! I'm not wasting this chance! I'm getting everything I'm owed for how much I suffered! People are gonna love me! They're gonna respect me! I'm gonna kick so much ass! I'm gonna have a harem of slags, one that includes all the waifus from the anime! I'm not gonna be a loser anymore!" I could see Daud's veins bulging against his skin which tightly conformed to the shape of his flexing muscles. His teeth gnashed. Cracks formed in the fabric of spacetime around him.
Finally I understood Daud's true nature. This wretched man before me was here to live out his fantasies, and he had reincarnated with all the power he needed to make those fantasies a reality.
I didn't text anything to Daud, as I was afraid that all I'd do is push Daud's rage to a point beyond his own control.
My breathing stopped.
The world visibly distorted around Daud, as if he were a black hole pulling in reality.
Then everything returned to normal. The cracks disappeared while the distortions in existence were undone. Daud's muscles relaxed. He went from having beastial bared teeth to a big smile. His arms crossed and his head tilted back slightly.
Daud chuckled softly.
All my tension increased.
"As if I'd lose my cool over you." Daud spoke from the back of his throat. "I'm the protagonist."
The hair atop Daud's head stood on end and became spiky. His eyes were clear to see. They were purple, and he had red upside-down pentagrams in place of pupils.
He strolled towards me with big, strong steps, as if he were trying to harm the floor itself. His eyes released trails of red energy as he moved.
I couldn't bring myself to move.
Once he stopped, his body was looming mere inches away from me.
"You're my waifu. If I want you, I can take you. After all, you exist for me."
Every cell that composed me was screaming.
I tried to call for help with my brain implant, but the entire device refused to turn on. Daud was using an undetectably small amount of Elixir to alter physics and make it so my implant couldn't function.
My heart hurt from how quickly it was beating.
I shouted as hard as I could to try and get the attention of other people in the aquarium, but I couldn't produce a single noise. Daud had manipulated the local physics so I couldn't make sounds.
It was impossible for me to stop shaking. My teeth chattered. I was freezing cold. A sensation of weightlessness overtook me.
There was no way for me to stop Daud from doing what he wished to me.
But I refused to give up. Even if it was pointless, I would fight.
I clapped my hands together as I made the oxygen and hydrogen around Daud act as solids to seal him in place and suffocate him. At the same time, I removed all the oxygen and water from Daud's body.
"Did you really think I needed to breathe? That I needed water? That you could trap me?" Daud took a step forward, breaking through the invisible prison I had created around him so easily that it was as if it wasn't even there.
A gust of oxygen and hydrogen carried me away as Daud remained unfazed, even after having multiple vital resources removed from his body. I swapped strategies and began flooding Daud's body with oxygen and ozone to poison him, as well as water to drown him. In tandem with my internal assault, I attacked Daud's outside with blades of oxygen, blasts of blazing hydrogen, and jets of water.
Even as his clothes were torn apart, Daud was unaffected. His smile remained in place as he casually walked towards me.
My fingers interlocked as I formed a globule of liquid hydrogen around Daud, his insides filling with the fluid. It grew so cold that it reached absolute zero. This should have caused Daud's elementary particles to lose all energy and make his whole body fall apart.
That didn't happen.
He didn't even freeze.
Daud flexed his muscles slightly which dispersed the liquid hydrogen into its component particles due to the force of the movement.
"Flames or freezing, targeting my skin or my organs, you still can never hurt me." Daud stuck to his casual pace.
I generated a smokescreen of water vapor to obscure my position as I exited the shark tunnel.
Upon entering a different part of the aquarium, I spotted someone. It was a man with his back to me as he observed some sea slugs.
He hadn't seen me yet. I was going to call out to him, but I hesitated. Part of me feared that they wouldn't believe me if I told them Daud was trying to assault me. Given how everyone hated me, and the fact that I had just launched several attacks at him while he hadn't responded in kind yet, Daud could easily convince the bystander that I was the one assailing him.
I regretted hastily attacking Daud once his intentions became clear, especially given my offensive failed to faze Daud anyway.
While my impulsivity born from my ADHD had created the potential for future problems, my paranoia born from my fear of repeating past mistakes was making things even worse. Even if I could have been accused of attacking Daud, at least Daud would probably have stopped trying to assault me once I got other people involved in the situation who could act as witnesses. Unfortunately, my overthinking made me wait too long.
Right when I was about to get the bystander's attention, I found that I was no longer in the aquarium.
In every direction was an infinite expanse of red. Sometimes the sanguine infinity looked like a flowing liquid, sometimes a wispy powder, and sometimes a crystalline semi-solid. The substance was always changing, a true chaos that was outside of any laws or logic.
I was in a universe of Elixir.
"Sorry it's not the most romantic, but this is what you'll have to deal with since you're being so stubborn." Daud appeared before me as I floated in the void. "I used Elixir to fuck around with physics and create an infinite space outside of the normal spacetime continuum. Since Elixir can only break physics temporarily, this place won't last forever, but it'll do."
There was no way I could escape this cosmos, nor could I contact anyone outside it.
Daud smirked as he approached my floating self. His feet stepped on nothing, yet each step echoed as if he were walking on the marble floor of a great hall.
"I'd say I'll make this quick, but I don't like lying."
The endless macrocosm we were in amplified my existing anxiety. I liked small, tight spaces, and this was the farthest thing from it. There was nothing I could surround myself with.
And that also meant there was nothing that could be destroyed. There was no risk of collateral damage here.
A purring came from my chest and my throat. The sides of my mouth rose upward.
Even if the chances were low, I believed there was a possibility I could get out of this situation.
"Are you coming around? I had a feeling you would. How could you not soak your panties after seeing how strong I am?" Daud began pulling off what remained of his clothes until he was naked.
I stretched out my arms and legs. A massive amount of hydrogen was created at my behest, and that hydrogen underwent nuclear fusion.
Like I had done years ago, I created a star, but this one was far larger. It was so tremendous that it filled the infinite void in its entirety, turning it into an endless conflagration that could easily be mistaken for Hell.
The heat of my flames exceeded the Hagedorn temperature and the Planck temperature. It kept rising and rising until it became infinitely hot and then exceeded even that. Physics broke down and spacetime curved so far it folded through itself. A beyond infinite amount of energy was born. All of the unlimited number of spatial and temporal dimensions that existed above the dimensions that composed Daud and I's native reality shattered.
Daud was engulfed by the inferno, but was undamaged. He did stop his approach as the unending star filled his universe. His eyebrows shifted from being low to going as high as possible as he took in the phenomenon.
My limbs pulled in and I curled into a ball. The star receded and condensed with me at the epicenter, my clothes burning away except for my glasses. What was once an engine of nuclear fusion, one that reached into and destroyed endless higher layers of reality that each completely invalidated the layers that preceded them, was now compressing around me.
The tremendous force I had created was now focused into a thin layer around my body. It was an exoskeleton of flames and radiation, one that produced blinding bright light that filled the void. My hair looked like a cape of fire, and more of the blaze shaped into a long dress to clothe me.
This was a super form I had invented, one that didn't exist in the Al-Kimiya anime. It was one so powerful that it previously only existed in theory, as actually entering this form would result in the destruction of Underworld.
If anything in my arsenale could stop Daud, it was this form.
Nuha Incarnate.
"Could you dim the lights a bit?" Daud put his hand in front of his eyes. "Having superhuman vision means that bright lights are extra bright for me."
I attacked Daud with such speed that it was faster than the instantaneous. It was on the scale of an infinite dimensional time stream, allowing it to come from the past, present, and future simultaneously.
A star of even greater power than the one that filled the void appeared inside of Daud. Its heat and flames erupted out of all the man's orifices. Another star appeared around Daud to burn away his exterior. An onslaught of stars manifested inside and outside of Daud.
After burying Daud in stars, I made them all explode into hypernovae that filled the void once more. The red universe quaked and galaxy sized holes in reality tore open. Those gaps in existence were pulled open further as the detonating stars turned into black holes that all released gamma ray bursts, streams of radiation that were even more destructive than the hypernovae.
The black holes all combined into one, pulling in everything in Daud's universe sans myself. Even the entire timespace continuum of the infinite dimensions of this cosmos got pulled in and annihilated. The Elixir that dyed the realm red was gone, and thus I now floated in a colorless nothingness with the black hole.
And then the black hole was obliterated.
In its place was Daud.
He didn't have a scratch.
I couldn't feel my heartbeat anymore.
"You really thought that would work? Did you forget who I am? If your attacks aren't entirely transcendent of dimensionality, then you're wasting your time and mine." Daud began walking towards me again.
I was about to attack again, but then Daud blew at me. His swift exhalation snuffed out my Nuha Incarnate form like a candle's flame, leaving me nude. It didn't make sense how he could blow my fire out when there was no air in this void, but Daud's actions didn't need to make sense. He was an overpowered self-insert anime protagonist; he could do whatever he wanted.
"It's real convenient that we're both naked already, though I was looking forward to ripping your clothes off." Daud held his tongue between his teeth. "Man, you boobs are bonkers. I think I'll start off by using them for a titjob."
Daud was right in front of me. He reached for my chest.
I sidestepped around Daud's arm and kicked him in the dick. He was unmoved.
My fist drove into Daud's throat. He didn't budge.
Even knowing it was pointless, I refused to let Daud do as he wished without a fight. If Alchemy failed, then maybe there was some chance hand-to-hand combat would work. I unleashed a combination of strikes to every vital area of Daud's body. Despite focusing primarily on Alchemy and academics, I had also spent a good amount of time training in various martial arts in case my ability to use Alchemy was lost or sealed during a fight.
The bones in my hands, feet, elbows, and knees dislocated and broke from repeatedly slamming into Daud's unyielding body. My limbs became bloody and swollen, but I kept the barrage going.
"You really are doing this. Really?" Daud began to laugh hysterically. He held his gut and bent forward as he tried and failed to speak from how hard he was laughing.
I kept on hitting him. My limbs were completely numb.
After wiping the tears from his eyes, Daud stood up straight again.
"I needed that laugh. Anyway."
Suddenly, Daud's hand was wrapped around my neck. My barrage was interrupted, and when I tried to restart it, I found that my limbs could do nothing but dangle at my sides. The only thing that had been keeping my mutilated arms and legs going was adrenaline, and now that Daud had forced me to stop moving for a moment, the rush fueling me was fading.
The panic I felt at what was happening was all encompassing. I didn't just feel a pit in my stomach, my body felt empty, hollow, ready to collapse in on itself. My mind kept reassessing the situation, trying to find a way to prove it wasn't real, or to at least find a quick and easy solution to make the problem go away. It's just that I didn't want to believe something this big, this life changing was really happening to me. Tremors took hold over my body, attempts to calm myself being meaningless as it was not my conscious will that caused the oscillations. I wasn't being lazy, I was trying my best to solve this scenario using every ounce of my mental power, and yet it couldn't be solved. It dawned on me that, despite the grand speeches I had heard throughout both my lives about how anyone could overcome any circumstance with enough effort, there was no fixing this no matter how hard I tried. It would have been frustrating for me if I wasn't preoccupied with feeling completely overwhelmed. My efforts didn't matter. My desires didn't matter. I was a passenger in a predetermined experience. I was helpless.
Even understanding that, I rebelled pointlessly.
I spit towards Daud's face.
With an imperceptible deflection, Daud sent my spit back into my own face rather than his.
"The whole unbreakable will thing is admirable, but you need to know when to bow out with some grace." Daud's voice deepened and his head tilted down. "Have some class."
The fact that Daud felt he had any right to talk about class made my eyes go wide and a burning emotion spread through my veins. I nearly got my limbs moving again due to the sheer rage pumping through me. If I was still able to speak, I might have gone on a profanity filled rant to Daud about his hypocrisy.
Then my anger fizzled out to nothing.
Daud had such a big smile on his face. He kept chuckling lightly. His body shook.
He was like an excited child.
At the same time, there was an intensity to his breathing. His posture was stilted. His smile wavered on occasion. His fingers repeatedly twitched. Sweat made his skin shine.
He was anxious.
Initially, I wondered if he feared he would underperform, that he'd ejaculate quickly and feel humiliated. Perhaps that was part of why he was so uneasy.
But it was more than that.
His eyes darted around the void, as if anticipating the arrival of something.
No, he feared the arrival of something, anything, that could make this scenario go wrong for him. That was why he jumped when one of my legs spasmed. His breathing stopped and he stared at me, as if I was actually a threat to him.
It was like he was afraid this moment was going to be ripped away.
This moment where he held power over me meant so much to him.
He needed to have his way with me for the sake of his confidence.
His first life was spent feeling impotent, incompetent, and meaningless. Now he had a second chance and all the power he needed to feel strong, capable, and significant. Living his self-indulgent fantasy life was still a dream to him, one he clung to desperately.
The reason I could glean all this about him was because I was very much the same. My old life was defined by my mistakes, and this new one was an opportunity to not repeat them, though I had been far from successful. I understood how soul crushing it was to be given a second chance only to fuck it up.
That was what Daud feared.
Despite being able to sympathize with him, I did not think any better of Daud. It actually caused me to think even worse of him, and more highly of myself.
Even at my worst, I was still trying to help people in this second life, even if I kept failing. That was how I tried to validate myself.
Daud could only chase that same validation through hedonism, even at the expense of others.
How pathetic.
The smile on Daud's face transformed into a frown so deep it drew several creases along his face.
"What's with that look?"
While I didn't form the expression I wore consciously, I knew exactly what it was.
I was looking at Daud with pity in my eyes.
"What? You think you're better than me? Do you think you can intimidate me, or make me feel bad or something? Or are you trying to look tough? You wanna pretend you're not afraid?"
My expression didn't change.
"You're not impressing anyone."
I kept on staring at Daud.
"This is stupid."
And yet I kept on looking at Daud.
"You're such a cunt." Daud took the glasses off my face, crushed them in his hand, and then tossed them behind him.
Without my glasses, my vision became blurry, so much so that I couldn't make out any details of Daud's face.
But my countenance did not shift, nor did the direction of my gaze.
"Y'know, I can gouge your eyes out."
I was unmoved.
"Seriously, I will."
I was unmoved.
The back of Daud's hand swiped across my face. My mouth tasted of copper. I spit out two molars and a canine.
And I was unmoved.
Like earlier, Daud's muscles swelled and his veins pulsed against his skin.
"Let's see you keep that look when you're feeling my cock destroy your pussy. By the time I'm done, you'll be saying how sorry you are while begging me for more like a dog. That's if you survive this. I'm so pissed right now that I might tear you in half." Daud forced a toothy grin to form on his face.
And I was unmoved, even as Daud had his way with me.