This story begins with a fantastic death metal concert, everything is moving in a perfect rhythm, the baseline is holding good and the rock solo kicks in. Some notes may sound to you as din but it's making the fans insane, the cacophony is the most soothing melody for them. The music cues again, a few moments later, a body falls on the center stage and with the sound of a bullet being fired. Cacophony turns into turbulence, which brings in silence, it's the Asur (a guy in a full white glimmering tuxedo)

(He lands down)

Asur- Such a lovely noise it was, (looks at the soloist) why did you stop? (turns back to the clueless) Let's begin again and this would be better for silence builds suspense (he raises up his right arm, twists his fingers, his pinky and thumb makes contact, they collide and surprisingly and much more unfortunately it snaps)

The music of gunshots kick in, piercing through the mortal bodies of people are the elegant pieces of lead propelled from the machine guns, which now hold the baseline. His men are on the centre stage taking out all the cacophony of the audience. He picks up the mic and starts to sing-

"My soul's on a pyre,

Heart's filled with desire,

My reality and dreams crash,

It's a desert of ash."

Asur(to a random man)- Nishaed! You are against the flow, shoot in the rhythm, you are spoiling my show. Wait, Stop, you are breaking the harmony, Hear it, the beat, zing zing zak, zaka zaka zing zing. Now shoot. (he shoots Nishaed) Harmony restored, disharmony annihilated, when no subordination of individual interest to group interest is possible, then I got to fire you. Move in the beat guys! Zing zing zak, zaka zaka zing zing.

He puts up a board and mumbles, "Since your government denied me a grant of 100 milliard dollars, I take these people's live as interest for your delay. Although I wonder what would have been cheaper? The money produced by the not so dead in the not too distant past or a couple hundred billion dollars, never mind, I am not good at math but I am serious." - The Asur

Shooting stops rhythmically, the audience becomes devoid of life, dead with metal inside their body, and a red lake forms.

Asur- Speechless. Breath-taking. Amazing performance guys (looks at his watch), gotta run, by the time cops reach, they would be too late as usual.

8 mins ago, in the streets

A cop vehicle was sustaining the curfew

Officier 1- What do you think Asur's upto? Do you think it was wise to buy the hint for a 100 thousand bucks?

Officier 2- Well it doesn't make it any clearer, so... Even if it's correct, what's the guarantee that it's not just some kind of scam? What will the New York police be then? Jokers and clowns?

He looks at the riddle and the hint

It makes fall, what's too big to fall. It makes possible what's beyond the horizons of your mental comprehension. It's liable to change and carries you to your death.

Metal

Square

Death

Hint- Titanium

The car's wheels meet with the nails laid on the ground and lose all its speed and air, and stops.

Officer 1 goes out to check, but does not come back. Officer 2 comes out, he being unaware, behind him is a man covered in chunks of metal, camouflaged in its matte black colour, speaks in a grumbling, coarse, rough and harsh voice, "Give me what you have on Asur."

He consumed by fear, with his trembling hands points his gun at the man's direction, only to find nothing. The mystical man knocks him off from behind with his iron fist with a blow on his head.

The mystic reads, "It makes fall, what's too big to fall. It makes possible what's beyond the horizons of your mental comprehension. It's liable to change and carries you to your death.

Metal

Square

Death

Hint- Titanium"

Mystic- A hundred  thousand dollars wasted, the hint makes it way too obvious. Time square, death metal concert, which should be beginning at 12 p.m....

Gazes upon the officer's watch "12:01 A.M."

"First day and I am late at work."

Present time, on a bridge under construction...

Asur in his red-white tuxedo is escaping after the massacre while humming, "zing zing zak, zaka zaka zaka zing zing"

While his 4 vehicles had taken the road, the mystic flies with a jet-pack, he disengages his flying sorcery, flips and flaunts his cape and lands upon a four-wheeler.

Man 1- Hey man, what's that noise?

Man 2- Must be thunder

Man 3- Must be an earthquake

The mystic attaches some band on his wrist and a crystallized carbon blade comes running down stealthily, with his agile body, he cuts out a circular block

Man 1- The gods must be furious

Man 2- Ra Ra!

Ra Ra- Holy--

Mystic pulls him up, "You better know how to swim", throws him off to the river.

Man 3 (in the back of the van)- Romi, drive!

Romi- But Howww!?

Man 4 on comm- Hair in the butter, a 6 feet 4, with some kind of sword, must be dealt with

The van falls into the river and he jumps off to another chariot, the driver starts drifting, he slips but holds onto the vehicle with the blade

The driver- Shoot him morons!

Asur on comm- Ross, I need you to run an experiment, find out if the river's salty.

Ross- What you talkin' boss?

Asur- Take him into the water,(chuckles) he better know how to swim (hysterical).

He (the mystic) puts one of his feet onto the top of the car and stands up

Ross- This one's for you boss

Man 5- what the hell do you think you doin'

This van was destined to meet the same fate, it just met it a little too early for our black knight to change vans. This time he falls but thanks to the propellers at his feet, they emitted glimmering blue rays and he was back in the chase game, again. He puts back his deadly wristband

The mystic- "Apsara, activate race mode"

The electrochromic glass on his helmet turns blue, the wheels under his feet turn vertical, the lids on his ankles uncover, the propulsion engine kicks in and now he is faster than a cheetah. He reaches them and jumps and throws 6 crystallized carbon kunai knives mid-air and none of them deviate. The last van and the demon's chariot stop and here's where Asur first witnesses his nemesis

Asur- You know I really wanted to meet you alone, so,(*thinks* who is he and how is he impervious to my mind-reading) boys! (10 people came out of the van, he raises up his left arm, twists his fingers, and his pinky and thumb make contact, they collide and surprisingly and much more unfortunately, it snaps)

The gunshots begin and the mystic jumps, his cape flaunts and the electrochromic glass turns back to black. As soon as he turns to the 10, his hands filled with shurikens are revealed. 8 shurikens cut through the flesh of 8 men, leaving lacerations. They drop their gun. The mystic reaches the last two, they fire in terror, but he also seemed impervious to their bullets. He snatched one of their guns and knocked out the other one. It was finally him versus 9. With a fantastic demonstration of MMA, he defeats the 7 of them quite efficiently by attacking their chakra points and vulnerable spots. Man 6, "What do you think you are, I bet you'd bleed the same blood those weaklings we killed bled", now he was brutal, no, he didn't kill any of them but his suit was stained with their blood.

Asur(to the driver)- Nishaed, kill him for me, will ya?

Driver- But I am not Nishaed, you killed him

Asur- Oughhhh, is it so? Then I promote you to Nishaed, kill the black knight, else my piranhas would devour you (modulating his pitch while speaking)

(The driver goes out)

The mystic gazes at him

The driver jumps into the river

Asur- oOHH MY Disloyal servant, I was serious, now you must pay

The mystic- First you must clear your debt.

Asur- Ooh I am afraid! Who are you? Batman? Iron man? Blue Beetle? What should I call ya? I must know the one guy who took down half a hundred of my men. Or was it so, I am not good at math, never mind. You can tell me your name now that we have found some common ground

The mystic(looks at the blood stains on his tuxedo)- Call me Sur. Now to pay for your crimes, you will work for me.

Asur- Alter ego, huh? Are you my fan, well I have a vacancy Mr--

Sur- We have nothing similar, and only I recruit

Asur- Then I decline

Sur(raises his voice)- You have no idea what's coming! This is the time for enemies to become allies, or else humanity would be annihilated.

Asur- I don't change with time, I will die but sacrifice my ideals and there must be always someone at the bottom of the food chain. If they can't save themselves then they better climb, why you interfere?

Sur- The thoughts entering my mind make me liable to save my kind. And going solo will just end you getting killed. What is it you want?

Asur- If I die then my soul would be unsatisfied and I would reincarnate HA HA HA. So now, what is it that I want? I want a lot of things, and what I want, I don't beg from others, I take. I am almost a God, I already can't die naturally like Gods, I can change form like Gods--

Sur- You would soon be stripped from your freedom to fantasize when you see the real ones.

Asur- Ooh the seven Gods of the prophecy, who would restore humanity in humans?

Sur- How do you know about them?

Asur- I found two, sold their identities, they must have got the first one by now--

Sur- Give me all you have on them!

Asur- My analysis says you must be a billionaire

Sur- Your analysis is more pathetic than your philosophy

Asur- Then earn the information.

Asur, as if with some alchemy, transforms his body and becomes demon-like, "Thanks to our little chat, I got some time to manipulate my genes"

Sur charges, Asur dodges. Asur grabs Sur's fist, "I expected more, and you are definitely not one of them", propellers in his other elbow activate, and there he lands his first blow. He throws 4 kunai knives toward him, Asur blocks with his right arm, and he transforms his right arm into a blaster.

Asur- Here comes the return gift (he shoots him with kunai knives)

Sur effortlessly dodges the first two kunai knives, arches back to evade the third one, and the fourth one scars his thigh.

Sur- What are you, exactly?

Asur- What you can't be.

Asur hardens his skin, and brings out claws. Sur, "Apsara, activate battle mode", the electrochromic glass on his helmet turned red, all the lids in his suit opened. A fantastic battle begins, after 8 mins of fighting, Asur exhausts and stands on the bridge's railing.

Asur- Now I must leave kid, I have more pressing matters to attend to. (He is dropping off the railing)

Sur tangles him by shooting a laser noose, which fixates around his neck and burns and suffocates him, then shoots him with a brooch-like-sensor, which sticks on his head. "Hear's the deal, you think of his location and I let you go"

Sur- Apsara, read and save

Apsara- Results:

My mind wiggle wiggle, here's a riddle:

Change 11000 Change 101 + . Change 10111 Change 100

Jha

iiiv1

I am water but I am also solid, and my core burns. I am not a circle, neither am I flat.

That's all you get, thanks to our little chat, I evolve again. अलविदा (Goodbye).

Without a faint shriek, with his transformed sword-like arm, he decapitates himself.

On a distant island

Asur gets out of the water in a semi-mermaid-like body(two tail-like legs), with him he carries the new Nishaed, and his Secret bunker unveils itself. He goes to his fish pond.

Asur- Ooo Nishaed my boy, if you can't fend for me then why should I waste money on your salary, huh? I got to minimize my loss, am I not?

Nishaed- Sir please sir, I will work without a salary, please sir

Asur- Then how would you feed yourself? I am not that cruel, it's way too much to let you live with starvation and considering your ineffectiveness, to waste your and my time. I can't even let you get off the hook so easy, after all my piranhas hold high expectations for me, and it would not make a very good impression either. Have peace, only after excruciating pain. (He laughs hysterically.)

He drops him off, while Nishaed produces squeals of forgiveness. The pond turns red.

Asur(serious, to his henchmen)- Do any one of you want to become a joke like him.

In the secret base

Sur carries the demon's head with him

A white tiger-faced man(6 feet, 6)- What kind of monstrosity, are you bringing in. I told you to bring him on our side, not his head. We don't have time for such shit-head.

Sur- He's not yet dealt, he's still alive.

The tiger-faced man- But how?

Sur- Some sort of gene manipulation, I got to run some tests on him to be sure.

The tiger-faced man- Human's lust for power never ceases to amaze me.

Sur- I got a lead on one of them, your "Gods"

The tiger-faced man- You still don't believe in them?

Sur- I believe in nothing. Neither in "Gods" nor in the morality of your decision to recruit a mass murderer. Beings like him can't be reasoned with. And this life who knows if it's nothing but a dream, at least that's what I wish every day, a long horrible dream.

The tiger-faced man- Stop being delusional. Anyway, I found the first one.

Tiger-faced introduces him to a 6 feet 2-inch dark-skinned guy, with a blindfold.

Sur- I knew God's blind

The tiger-faced man- He ain't, it's just a part of his oath, he's called Saxum.

Sur- What oath?

Saxum- I won't see the world until my brother can see a better one.

Sur (looks at a boy in a water tank attached with an oxygen mask and couple dozen sensors, terribly wounded)- What happened to him?

The tiger-faced man- We don't have time for this, we must reach the other one before anyone, the lead!

Sur- Apsara, display file Prithvi.

(To be continued in the next chapter, "Noone and the jeopardy of reality")