Obur Segune had spent his whole life afraid of what he could transform into. And he had only been able to overcome that fear on very rare occasions. The reason for this was his monster-type transformational deva was special – it had come along with a curse.

A curse called Possessive Morph Syndrome (PMS).

Transformational deva users suffering from this affliction would lose control of themselves if they fully changed into whatever their morph form was. Almost as if their human and morphed self were two separate entities that had different personalities, the morphed selves often having destructive and murderous inclinations.

From the time Obur had first discovered his deva, many people – some very close to him – had been killed or hurt by the monster he turned into. Despite being part of the aristocracy in his home country of Tsal, whatever was left of his family after his rampages had been forced to leave under the pressure from the locals, ending up in Barilia.

There the young Mr. Segune had met Aguaro Vivaya, who was one year older than him, and Zoran Lawell, who was one year younger – the former having a penchant for violence himself, the latter also being a descendant of a royal family with a dark past, which had led to the three of them quickly becoming close friends. Their friendship had only become stronger as they had fought side by side during the first war with Darkalight and had become teachers at Sunbird in the war’s aftermath.

And so in the present the three of them had the chance to fight side by side with each other and their students to eradicate Darkalight once and for all. Only Obur had wound up being separated from both his closest friends for strategic reasons and from the students in his Stormbringers unit due to the intervention of a certain undead darkan.

The darkan in question was one of the two captains serving directly under Deathaxe, which meant they were probably the strongest ‘living’ representatives of their species after their leader himself, them targeting the respective leaders of the Sunbird School Force aerial and ground troops being a very good strategic move. This was especially true in Obur’s case, who had no deputies among the Stormbringers the way Gudard Beo had among the Sunbird ground forces. In his absence, his students had been left all alone to fend against the might of most of the darkans and the entirety of Darkalight’s aircrafts in the Dreadblade Fortress area.

So Mr. Segune was greatly tempted to fully transform as his enemy hammered him yet again in the pile of rock spikes used as their battlefield. If he changed into a monster, dispatching the undead darkan in front of him would be no problem at all, but what Obur feared was the horror that could follow in the wake of that villain’s defeat.

Aguaro was fighting a long way away from Dreadblade and Zoran had his hands full trying to lead the Hopeful Eight and Martian Phoenix Squads along with Neana in their attempt to break through the fortress’s front gate. Few others were capable of containing and pacifying those two’s friend after entering a fully morphed form and without being able to rely on such support in the present situation, it was very likely for him to turn his monstrous fury to the very students he was meant to lead and protect. Or some of his other allies.

That would not only be an unforgivable crime that would make Obur kill himself if he ever came to his senses again, but would ensure the failure of the Sunbird School Force’s mission and that Force’s total annihilation. Darkalight could after all just pull their troops back and leave it to the transformed Literature teacher to kill as many of his comrades as he could, stepping in then to finish off the rest along with Mr. Segune himself after he had exhausted enough of his powers.

Knowing the other teachers who were part of the Force, the cursed morph believed they were more capable of coming to the Stormbringers’ aid in his absence to ensure their survival and victory than of stopping his rampage if he transformed to go and help them himself. But from all the glances he had been able to steal of the youngsters’ current situation, no help seemed to have come their way so far.

The darkan captain, who had introduced himself as Mastrot, did not give his opponent more time to ponder his decision, now destroying the whole rock spike pile they were on with yet another unique manifestation of his deva. Similar to other darkans, Mastrot too excelled at creating bone-type structures and just like with them, his totem manifest took the form of only the animal’s skeleton.

Different darkans were better at creating different parts of the skeleton, however, and in Mastrot’s case, he focused on making skulls. Due to the skull focus of his deva, his totem manifested as a solid skull with a body in the form of a mass or limbless snake-like shape, but to make up for that, he could produce every animal’s skull one could imagine. The combination of these two traits of his abilities had earned him the nickname ‘black chimera head’, which he had shared to be very proud of with his enemy during their exchanges so far.

So in order to destroy the pile of rock spikes, Mastrot created a gigantic crocodile skull made of Karaid and darkness and ordered it to eat the pile whole, making Mr. Segune who was at the top of that pile fall into the pit of infinite blackness that was its mouth. Obur pushed back the darkness whose jaws tried to gnaw at him then by creating a sphere of his pink lightning around himself, rapidly increasing its size to obliterate the whole skull.

That was successful, but amid some of the skull leftovers came Mastrot’s fist, the Literature teacher managing to block it in the last moment by putting up a lightning barrier made of isosceles triangles. Many blades also shaped like isosceles triangles came out of that barrier to pierce the darkan, his counter to the enemy attack being to change the shape of the Karaid already cladding his fist into an ibis skull.

The skull’s long beak with a very sharp end shattered many of the blades and pierced straight through the shield, Obur using high-speed teleportation of the type that left an afterimage in its wake to fool Mastrot into thinking he had actually stabbed him while reappearing behind him. A double pink lightning fist was about to be crushed in the villain’s head then, but that too was stopped, this time by a massive black tortoise skull.

That skull blew up in massive amounts of Karaid and darkness to throw the Literature teacher back, instead of hitting the ground feeling an acute pain in his right arm and right half of the back and chest. He had been stabbed by something from behind multiple times, when looking around to try and identify it realizing Mastrot had impaled him on the horns of a deer skull as big as his other creations.

And as the pain caused by his wounds reached its peak and Obur could feel his torn-up uniform was getting soaked in more and more of the blood leaking out of the wounds profusely, the darkalighter stepped closer to him and removed his helmet – a helmet the cursed morph had only been able to crack during their battle so far.

Under it was a humanoid head with deathly pale marble-like skin, unnaturally pronounced cheekbones, eyes with a black sclera, pale green irises and no pupils, very scarce hair, a bigger forehead than normal and two black ram-like horns sticking out from the sides of that forehead. As though this face wasn’t terrifying enough in appearance as it was, the combination of annoyance and displeasure on it made Mastrot look all the more nightmarish.

(Mastrot) ‘I’ve seen you use the afterimage trick enough times to be able to tell if it’s really you or not. And you always go for behind-the-back attacks after using it, so it wasn’t hard to counter you at all. It was really boring, actually.

That’s what this battle has become. Boring.’ – sighing with ever increasing annoyance, Mastrot soon continued – ‘You won’t have the time to understand this about me, but I really hate boring stuff. My life since becoming an undead has overall been a lot more boring than the life that came before it and I’ve desperately been looking for something to liven things up.

From the stuff I had heard about Obur the Headless Harpy Demon, I had really hoped you’d be able to make me feel more alive than my previous opponents, so I made sure to attack you of all the possible targets on this field. But in the end you turned out to be even more boring than the average ones.

Since you’ve wasted enough of my time already, I’ll just …’

Mastrot couldn’t finish because a multi-elemental vulture that had several pairs of beetle wings and beetle horns coming out of its beak went through him then, picking the undead darkan up to carry far away. Right after it disappeared, all the members of Mr. Segune’s Stormbringers appeared in front of him with a massive bang of a teleportation, having disturbing bright red irises to the last one and a look on their faces as annoyed as Mastrot’s. When Obur heard one among them speak as they came closer, he could tell from the words and tone used that he wasn’t actually listening to one of his students. If he had to guess, he’d say he was talking to Sunbird Psychology teacher Mara Kilzarad.

(Stormbringer No. 1) ‘Segune, just how much longer do you plan on sitting around and letting this darkan piece of shit beat you up?! Until you’re dead?!! From the looks of it, you’re not too far from getting to that point now!!!’

(Obur) ‘M-Mara? You put them under mind control?’

(Stormbringer No. 1) ‘And I would’ve done the same to you a long time ago if you had any mind control particles left in you, you useless fuck!! These brats were scared shitless before I took control of them!! Where were you while they were about to be killed?!

And didn’t you hear Zoran and Neana’s speech from earlier?! It’s time to turn this battle around!!! So move your ass and enter your fully morphed form, NOW!!!!’

(Obur) ‘I … I didn’t hear the whole speech because I was too busy getting killed by that darkan, but I sure heard … the part about your class being saved. Wasn’t getting them back all you wanted? Why are you still here fighting for Sunbird and Deckstoru, then?’

Whether because Mara herself had become too angry or because she did it as a deliberate move, not just the Stormbringer who had been talking to Obur until then, but all the members of his unit roared at the Literature teacher in one voice and with equally infuriated faces.

(The Stormbringers) ‘BECAUSE THEY SAVED MY FAMILY!!!!’

The students calmed down a little after that shout, the explanation the cursed morph had asked for being given individually by different members of the group from then on.

(Stormbringer No. 2) ‘Xen made a deal with me – that I would stay and fight with all of you if he could save my students from Darkalight!! That bastard held up his end, so now it’s my turn!! And I owe everyone on this field a lot less than you, Segune, so how about doing something to help them out already?!!’

(Stormbringer No. 3) ‘I was only able to help the Stormbringers slow down the rest of the darkans and the aerial forces, but they’ll be coming soon!! And that captain I got away from you is probably on his way back, too!!’

(Stormbringer No. 4) ‘Unless you want everyone here to die, stop acting like a fucking coward and risk your life for the students the way you always have!!! Go all-out and let the rest of us worry about keeping you in check!!!’

(Obur) ‘Y-you think … I don’t want to, Kilzarad? You think he isn’t talking to me right now? Telling me to let him loose to keep those I care about safe?

What if me changing leads to everyone here actually dying? Who’ll take responsibility for that? You? Zoran? Neana?

It’s up to …’

The way Mastrot had been interrupted earlier, a third party’s intervention prevented Obur from finishing his sentence.

In this case, however, that third party was Hikaru and a demon who were fighting against each other and the hordes of creations they had made.

For the young Summerbolt, who had already entered his dual-style form combining cladding his body in dense lightning on the outside and channeling lightning through it on the inside, the creations included clones of his riding sabertooth tigers armed with spear-shaped bolts. For his opponent, who had taken on a most unholy appearance that seemed to have combined all five fighting styles in one, the creations consisted of multiple multi-horned multi-eyed gigantic centipedes made of hellish flames and floating demonic eyeballs just as big and made of the same element that had many horns sticking out of them.

As they crashed next to Obur and the Stormbringers, Hikaru and his forces were on top and were able to do more damage, but right after the smoke risen in the vicinity was cut apart by concentrated beams of orange flames and hellish fire roars, this leading to the mad genius losing some of his troops. He did not seem to have been deterred by that one bit, even finding a moment to turn to the Literature teacher with a confident grin.

(Hikaru) ‘Sensei, we gonna get these bastards or what?!’

The young Summerbolt didn’t say anything after that, moving on to another location with his and his opponent’s remaining creations, in the wake of their disappearance one of the Stormbringers going over to Obur to take off and throw aside the scarf he had wrapped around his neck. Doing that revealed the horizontal scar that went from one end of his neck to the other, which Mr. Segune would keep hidden at all times, even during the hottest summer days.

(Stormbringer No. 5) ‘It’s this scar, isn’t?! That’s what triggers your transformation!! You going to do it or should I, Segune?!!’

(Obur) ‘Hikaru … h-he … that form … he’s going all-out already?! But why?!! They still haven’t …’

(Stormbringer No. 6) ‘Our plans went to shit, didn’t they?! That’s a fact you can’t escape, old man!!! Unlike me, you’ve fought against Darkalight during the last war, so you ought to know stuff like that happens when dealing with those undead bastards!!!’ – that student suddenly went silent, he and all the others looking around along with Obur as they heard the sound of black heart engines and silver wasper rotors coming closer and saw a Karaid-darkness mass of bones, which contained all the darkans led by Mastrot himself, falling down from the sky – ‘The only question is are you gonna keep lying dead there or do something about it, even if it means risking everything, the way Summerbolt is?!!! And the way everyone else here …’

(Obur) ‘Mara …’ – he had to pause, because the realization of what he was about to do made him choke for a moment and filled his eyes with tears, after managing to overcome them using all of his strength to free himself from the horns he had been impaled on, tearing off his right arm and a part of his torso’s upper right half in the process – ‘… get the Stormbringers away from me, OK? You deal with the aircrafts and leave the darkans to me.’

(Stormbringer No. 7) ‘Hey, hold on a minute!! I thought you were going to fight along with the brats and protect them! I can help keep them in control, sure, but anything more …’

Obur fired a thin, but very condensed lightning beam though his neck vertically, managing to say some last words to the mind-controlled Stormbringers as the detachment of his head from the body began.

(Obur) ‘Look at all the monsters already loose on the field.

None of them can … can protect anyone. All they … they can do is destroy.

And since the worse monster yet is about to take the stage, I’ll leave protecting … the Stormbringers and the rest of Sunbird to you.’

Mr. Segune was able to smile in his last moments, as he felt his consciousness slipping away holding on to the hope Mara would listen and take the students as far away from him as possible. Before the magenta lightning hit.

Once it did, all that was Obur would be gone. And only the Headless Harpy Demon would remain.