The rooftop was silent.
Chainsaw Man stood at the edge, chest heaving, blood dripping from a dozen small wounds. His chainsaws had slowed to an idle- that low rumble that never quite stopped, like an engine waiting for permission to scream.
In his arms, a cat.
Small. Orange and spotted. Dirty. It squirmed slightly, but didn't scratch. Didn't run. Just looked up at him with those wide animal eyes that didn't understand anything except that it had been saved.
"Dude." His voice came out muffled through the engine-head. "There was a cat."
He looked down at the street below. The Cockroach Devil was in pieces. Good. That thing had been annoying. Fast. Hard to hit. But dead now. Dead was dead.
The cat meowed.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll find you food in a sec. Just-"
A sound.
Not loud. Not close. But wrong. The kind of sound that made the engine in his head skip a beat.
The cat felt it too.
Its body went rigid. Its fur stood on end. And then, before Chainsaw Man could react, it bolted. Squirmed free, dropped to the rooftop, and ran. Fast. Away. Disappeared down a ventilation shaft like something was chasing it.
"Hey- !"
Too late.
Gone.
Chainsaw Man straightened. Turned.
Someone was standing on the other end of the rooftop.
Black helmet. Cracked visor. School uniform. One arm bandaged. The other-
Changing.
Shifting.
Bone plates sliding into place, claws extending, the whole limb becoming something that wasn't an arm anymore. Flesh and bone rearranging into a weapon. The transformation was wet, audible. Squelching. Like meat being ground and reformed.
Chainsaw Man's chainsaws revved. Once. Twice. A warning.
"Yo." He raised a hand. Friendly. "You saw a cat run past here? Little orange guy? I saved him and everything, and then he just-"
The figure moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
Chainsaw Man threw himself sideways. The clawed hand tore through the space where he'd been, missing by inches. Concrete exploded where it hit the rooftop edge, chunks of debris flying in all directions.
"WHOA-"
He rolled, came up, chainsaws spinning.
"Okay, rude! Very rude! I'm having a conversation here!"
The figure didn't respond.
Didn't speak.
Didn't even seem to hear.
Just came again.
The second attack was faster.
Chainsaw Man blocked, claws against chainsaws, and the impact sent shockwaves through both of them. Sparks flew. Metal screamed. For a moment, they were locked together, inches apart, the cracked visor reflecting nothing but the gleam of spinning teeth.
The figure's arm twitched.
Then from the elbow, more flesh erupted. Muscle tissue. Ropy and thick. It shot out like a whip, wrapped around Chainsaw Man's waist, and yanked.
"What the-"
He was lifted off his feet. Slammed into the rooftop. Then lifted again. Slammed again. The figure was swinging him like a toy- left, right, left, right- each impact cracking concrete, sending spiderwebs of fracture across the roof.
WHAM. Into the rooftop access door. Metal crumpled.
WHAM. Into a ventilation unit. Sparks and smoke.
WHAM. Into the edge of the building. The railing snapped.
Chainsaw Man's chainsaws bit into the muscle-tendon wrapped around him. It severed. Black fluid sprayed. He dropped, hit the roof, rolled, and came up grinning.
"That was new!"
The figure's severed appendage writhed on the ground for a moment, then went still.
The figure looked at it. Then back at Chainsaw Man.
Then it charged.
They went off the building together.
Not by choice- the figure tackled him at full speed, shoulder into chest, momentum carrying them both over the edge. For a moment, they hung in the air, suspended above the street, the wind roaring past them.
The figure's arms were already moving. Both of them now, the normal one was changing too. Bone plates. Claws. Becoming symmetrical. Becoming worse.
Chainsaw Man kicked off its chest. Created distance. Spun in the air.
They were falling past floors now- ten, fifteen, twenty-.windows blurring past. Chainsaw Man aimed. Fired.
From his arms, the chains launched.
Not the chainsaws themselves, the chains. The spiked, metal links that wrapped around his forearms. They shot forward like projectiles, wrapping around the figure's torso, cinching tight.
"Gotcha!"
He pulled.
Hard.
The figure rocketed toward him- fast, faster than falling- and Chainsaw Man brought up his knee at the last second. It connected with the figure's gut. Solid. The kind of hit that folded a person in half.
But the momentum was wrong. The angle was wrong. Instead of stopping, they both spun- tangled, wrapped, falling- and crashed through a window on the fifteenth floor.
They landed in an office.
Desks. Computers. Chairs. All of it exploding as they hit- glass, plastic, paper everywhere. They rolled across the floor, tearing through cubicles, slamming into walls, leaving destruction in their wake.
Chainsaw Man was the first up.
Barely.
He staggered, shook his head, chainsaws revving. The figure was already moving, claws extended, coming at him again. He blocked. Countered. Kicked it through a row of computers.
Monitors exploded. Sparks showered. The figure crashed into a filing cabinet, metal screeching, drawers flying open.
But it was already getting up.
Always getting up.
"Dude." Chainsaw Man was breathing hard now. Actually breathing hard. "What is your deal? I just fought a giant cockroach! Can't a guy get a break?"
The figure answered by shooting bone shards from its palm.
Chainsaw Man dove behind a desk. The shards tore through it like paper- thunkthunkthunk- embedding in the wall behind him. He rolled out, came up, launched himself at the figure.
They crashed through another window.
Fourteenth floor.
Thirteenth.
Twelfth.
They were falling again, tangled, clawing, fighting, the wind screaming past them. Chainsaw Man's chainsaws bit into the figure's shoulder. The figure's claws tore across his chest. Blood sprayed. Both of them. Everywhere.
Below them, the street. Cars. People running. Chaos.
And then-
Explosion.
Not from them. From somewhere else. A gas line? A car? A random devil caught in the crossfire? The shockwave hit them mid-air, sending them spinning in opposite directions. For a moment, Chainsaw Man lost sight of the figure. Lost all sense of up and down. Just noise and heat and tumbling.
He hit something. A truck. The roof crumpled. He bounced off, hit the street, rolled, came up.
'Where-'
Above him. The figure was still in the air. Recovering. Twisting. Blood trailing from its wounds, but whose blood? Its own? His?
The figure's arm bent backward.
Not broke, bent. At the elbow. The wrong way. Then the other arm did the same. Both of them, bending, twisting, winding up like springs being compressed.
Chainsaw Man's eyes went wide.
"Oh crap-"
The arms released.
But not the claws. Not the bone shards. The mass itself. The figure had somehow compressed all the biomass in its arms into a single point, and now it launched that mass forward like a boulder made of flesh and bone. A cannonball. A meteor. Coming straight at him.
He dodged.
Mostly.
The boulder caught his shoulder, glanced off, and kept going. Through a storefront. Through the back wall. Through another building. Somewhere in the distance, an explosion. A crash. Screams.
Chainsaw Man stumbled. His shoulder was wrecked. Torn. Bleeding. He looked at the figure.
It had done something else too.
In the moment of launching the boulder, it had severed its own arms. Both of them. Just... cut them off.
The figure stood there. Armless. Bleeding. Empty sockets where its limbs had been.
Then it looked up.
At him.
At the blood dripping from his wounds.
And in that moment, as another random explosion lit up the street behind them, as debris rained down, as chaos swallowed everything, the figure moved.
Not toward him.
Up.
Into the air.
It had caught his blood. Somehow. A drop of it, suspended in the chaos, recognized for what it was. Chainsaw Man's blood. Devil blood. Fuel.
The figure drank it in mid-air.
And its arms began to grow back.
It landed on top of a flipped car.
New arms. Pale. Wet. Forming even as it stood there. Fingers unfurling. Claws extending. The black helmet- still on, still cracked- tilted as it looked at him.
Chainsaw Man stared.
"Bro." He pointed at it with his good arm. "You're literally drinking my blood right now. That's so gross."
The figure didn't respond.
Just stepped off the car and came at him again.
They fought through the street.
Through overturned cars. Through broken glass. Through a convenience store that exploded for no reason, probably a gas leak, probably random, probably just the universe being chaotic. The fireball sent them both flying in opposite directions.
Chainsaw Man landed on a bus. Crumpled the roof.
The figure landed on a telephone pole. Wrapped its new arms around it. Spun. Used the momentum to launch itself back at him.
He jumped off the bus.
They met in mid-air.
Claws against chainsaws. Teeth against teeth. Neither of them speaking. Neither of them thinking. Just fighting.
They crashed through a billboard. Through the supports. Through the sign itself- some advertisement for ramen, now shredded and falling like confetti. They hit the ground, rolled, kept fighting.
Chainsaw Man got the upper hand for a moment- mounted the figure, chainsaws coming down toward its neck-
The figure's chest opened.
Not like a wound. Like a mouth. A gaping hole lined with teeth. It bit down on his chainsaw arm. Held it. Crushed.
He screamed. Pulled back. The teeth held.
Then the figure's arms came up, grabbed his head, and threw him into a truck.
The truck exploded.
Of course it did. Because that's what trucks do in this city. One minute they're just trucks, the next they're fireballs. Chainsaw Man was launched out of the flames, tumbling, smoking, pissed.
He landed on his feet. Just barely. His body was shredded- wounds everywhere, blood pouring, one arm hanging wrong. But he was standing.
The figure was standing too.
Across the street. Armored in bone. Blood dripping. Helmet cracked so badly now that he could see eyes underneath- hungry, ancient, wrong.
But also-
The uniform.
That school uniform. He knew that uniform. He wore that uniform. Every day. To school.
This guy went to his school.
Chainsaw Man's chainsaws idled lower.
"Hey." His voice was different now. Serious. "You go to Fourth East?"
The figure didn't respond.
Didn't move.
Just stared.
"You're wearing the uniform. That's my school, man." He took a step forward. "Are you a student? What's your-"
The figure's arm twisted.
Not attacking. Twisting. The bone plates rearranged, shifted, formed something new. Something Chainsaw Man hadn't seen before. A spiral. A drill. A cannon.
It aimed.
Fired.
Bone shards- hundreds of them- screamed across the street. Chainsaw Man dove behind a car. The shards tore through it. Through the next car. Through a wall. Through everything.
When he looked up, the figure was closer.
Much closer.
Standing over him.
Claws raised.
And in that moment, something happened.
A cat ran past.
Small. Orange. Dirty. The same one from the rooftop. It darted between them- fast, terrified- and disappeared into a gutter.
The figure froze.
Just for a second.
Its eyes tracked the cat. Followed it. Recognized it.
Chainsaw Man didn't hesitate.
He launched himself upward, chainsaws first, and caught the figure in the chest. Lifted it off its feet. Carried it through the air. Into a building. Through a wall. Through another wall. Through three walls before they stopped.
They crashed into an apartment. Someone's living room. TV on. Couple on the couch. They screamed.
Chainsaw Man ignored them.
He was on top of the figure. Chainsaws pressed against its throat. Winning.
"Gotcha."
The figure looked at him.
Its eyes, human eyes, behind all that hunger, flickered.
Then it did something stupid.
It tried to use its bone cannon again. Point blank. Aimed at his chest.
But the angle was wrong. The distance was wrong. The shot hit him- yes- but it also hit the floor beneath them. And the floor gave way.
They fell.
Again.
Through the next floor. Through the next. Through four floors of apartment building, crashing through ceilings, through furniture, through people's lives, until they hit the ground floor in an explosion of debris and dust.
Chainsaw Man was the first up.
Barely.
The figure was slower. Pushing itself out of the rubble. One arm broken. The other, gone. Severed in the fall? He couldn't tell.
It looked at him.
Looked at the hole in the ceiling above them.
Looked at the street beyond the shattered storefront.
And it ran.
Not toward him.
Away.
Through the storefront. Into the street. Around a corner. Gone.
Chainsaw Man stood there. Covered in blood. Covered in dust. Confused.
"Bro..."
He looked at the hole in the ceiling. At the screaming civilians. At the chaos everywhere.
"What the hell just happened?"
Somewhere in the rubble, a cat meowed.
He looked down.
The orange one. Sitting on a broken chair. Watching him.
"Dude." He scooped it up. Held it against his chest. "You owe me. Big time."
The cat meowed again.
He walked out of the destroyed building, into the afternoon sun, leaving destruction and questions behind.
The figure was gone.
For now.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The streets were busy.
That was one way to put it. Another way was chaotic. Another way was loud. Another way wasTokyo on a Tuesday afternoon, which meant everyone had opinions and wasn't afraid to share them.
The gigantic screen on the building overlooking the intersection was playing the news. Again. For the fifth time that hour. Because when something actually happened in this city, the media milked it until the cow turned to dust.
"-yesterday, devil-human Chainsaw Man saved a cat from the Cockroach Devil-"
A cheer went up from a group of teenagers below. They were wearing homemade merchandise- bad t-shirts, cheap pins, one kid with a chainsaw drawn on his face in marker.
"-but it seems our hero has met a new rival."
The screen cut to grainy footage. Phone camera quality. Shaky. But clear enough: two figures on a rooftop. One with chainsaws. One with a black helmet. Then they were gone, off the building, out of frame, into the chaos.
"Unnamed as of now, but it attacked the Chainsaw Hero like a coward, just after the fight with the Cockroach Devil. Nonetheless, this is concerning news as there might be a devil strong enough to match Chainsaw Man in power. What do the people think?"
The screen split. A reporter on site. Microphone ready. Crowd behind her.
"I'm on the scene near the site of yesterday's battle! Let's ask the locals what they think of Chainsaw Man!"
First up: a dad with his kid on his shoulders. Kid was wearing a tiny paper chainsaw on his head.
"Chainsaw Man? I'm a huge fan!" The dad grinned. "Too gory for kids, though." He glanced up at his son. "We'll wait a few years."
The kid made revving noises.
Next: a man with glasses. Arms crossed. Unimpressed.
"Hmmm... I just can't accept him." He adjusted his glasses. "I don't like him, I guess. Too flashy."
"And what about the new figure? The one in the helmet?"
"Probably another devil trying to make a name for himself. They're all the same."
A high school girl bounced into frame.
"Chainsaw Man? My entire class is obsessed!" She held up her phone. The wallpaper was Chainsaw Man. "We have a group chat dedicated to him!"
"And the new devil?"
She shrugged. "Haven't decided yet. The helmet's kinda cool, I guess? But he attacked after the Cockroach fight. That's lame. Let the man rest!"
A man in his mid-forties. Tired eyes. Work clothes.
"That Chainsaw fellow is stealing Devil Hunters' jobs." He shook his head. "We have organizations for this. Professionals. Not some... some devil running around playing hero."
"And the new one?"
"Worse. At least Chainsaw Man saves people. This one just attacked. Coward."
A young woman. Stylish. Impatient.
"I don't like him because of the property damage." She gestured vaguely at the city. "He destroys buildings. I don't like men who don't take care of things properly." A pause. "The new guy destroyed even more. So double dislike."
A dude who looked like a nice thug. A chill smile.
"Dude. Chainsaw Man?" He gave two thumbs up. "That's da bomb."
"The new fighter?"
"Don't know him. But anyone willing to throw down with Chainsaw Man has guts. Stupid guts, but guts."
A kid. Maybe twelve.
"Too popular. It ticks me off."
"The new fighter?"
"Didn't see him. Hope he loses."
A young woman. Nervous.
"Doesn't Chainsaw Man eat people?" She glanced around. "I heard he eats people."
"There's no evidence of that."
"Well, I heard it. And the new guy probably eats people too. They're both devils, right?"
A man. Angry. Pointing.
"He's a devil! The Devil Hunters need to be quick and kill him!" He jabbed a finger at the screen. "And that new one too! Kill them both!"
A young man. Quiet. Earnest.
"My friend got saved by Chainsaw Man once." He smiled. "He's a good guy. I don't care what anyone says." A pause. "The new guy... I hope he's okay. He looked hurt at the end of the video."
A 'popular girl' type.
"I totes love Chainsaw Man! If you're watching, give me your number!" She waved at the camera. "We can go on a date! I'll let you rev your chainsaws all night!"
"Ok... and the new fighter?"
"Maybe a double date? If he's cute under that helmet?"
A man with glasses. Conspiracy theorist energy.
"Chainsaw Man doesn't really exist!" He pushed his glasses up. "It's American propaganda! A false flag operation to destabilize Japan's devil defense systems!"
"...And the new fighter?"
"Deep state agent. Obviously."
A fat man. Enthusiastic.
"Chainsaw Man right? Chainsaw Man rules!" He pumped his fist. "The new guy? Haven't seen enough to judge. But if he fights Chainsaw Man, he's either really brave or really stupid. Maybe both!"
An old woman. Squinting at the camera.
"Chainsaw Man saved a cat yesterday, right?" She nodded to herself. "It definitely saved it to eat it for later. Devils don't do charity."
The camera panned across the crowd.
A scruffy-looking blonde-haired guy was standing near the edge of the group. Young. Messy. Wearing a school uniform under a jacket. He'd been watching the interviews with growing annoyance.
At the old woman's comment, his eye twitched.
"If you ask me-" He stepped forward. Voice raised. "Chainsaw Man hasn't eaten the cat!"
A few people turned. The blonde guy suddenly seemed to realize he'd spoken out loud. His expression shifted, annoyance melting into something else. A smirk. A pose. Hands sliding into his pockets like he owned the street.
"At my school, everybody knows Chainsaw Man." He nodded sagely. "He's great, right? Like, seriously great."
"Oh? A fan?"
"Fan? Please." He waved a hand. "I'm just speaking facts. The chainsaws are goretastic, but that's what's cool about him. That's the whole point."
He crossed his arms. Looked thoughtfully at the sky.
"Not that I know the dude or anything, but I seriously think he's a great guy." A pause. "By the way, just my guess, Chainsaw Man's number is 34-"
The reporter's eyes went wide.
"Hey! Chatterbox! Too much! Too much! You can't give your phone number on TV!"
The blonde guy grinned. Unrepentant.
"Just saying! If he's watching-"
"We'll cut that out!" The reporter made a slashing motion at the camera crew. "Sorry, folks! Technical difficulties! That's all for now!"
The screen flickered. Then cut to a commercial.
But the crowd was already chanting.
"CHAINSAW! CHAINSAW! CHAINSAW!"
The blonde guy stood in the middle of it, hands on his hips like an idiot, smirking like he'd just won something.
Behind him, a few people were already debating the new fighter.
"-heard someone call him 'Bone Devil' online-"
"-no way, 'Helmet Devil' is better-"
"-he looked strong though. Did you see that boulder thing he did?-"
"-coward move, attacking after a fight-"
"-still, anyone who can fight Chainsaw Man-"
The blonde guy's smirk flickered.
Just for a second.
Then it was back.