The Hashishins boarded passenger car 2 after the agents of NPSJ packed up their equipment and loaded it in the freight cars for shipment. The rumble of the train’s engine began when the automatic sliding doors shut. The horn signaled a warning to civilians nearby to keep their distance away from the tracks as the wheels click-clacked against the rails. The train sped along as fast as a bullet, thus beginning their journey to Saitama.

Before they got on board, Hashimoto was given back the katana he lost back in the village. He was surprised at how quickly it had been restored, since the cutting edge looked as sharp as flint,and the handle had been made to be gripped more comfortably.

The interior of the train had a modern design to it. Suited passengers sat at full-sized four-person tables, all located in rows. The seats had cushions, inviting anyone who sat down to sink into them. It was a luxury to Hashimoto’s eyes. They walked in line before they welcomed themselves to empty seats and sat down: Hoshika and Atsushi sat beside each other while Hashimoto took the opposite side. Atsushi dropped his axe between his legs head first, with a hand resting on the bottom of the handle and the other settling on top.

“Alrighty, let’s get to discussing,” Atsushi said with a genuine expression.

Hoshika burst into laughter.“Bwahahaha! Were you waiting all this time to say that?” Hoshika cackled before pointing out his boldness. “Hold on, hold on! Let me just—‘Alrighty, let’s get to discussing!’” Hoshika repeated, mocking Atsushi before returning back to her giggles. Hashimoto couldn’t help but chuckle too.

“Leave me alone! I never get the chance to be the cool one!” Atsushi groaned, turning away in frustration.

Hoshika happily sighed, clearing her throat before shifting to a more serious tone. “Before we get into figuring things out, let’s introduce ourselves to you. I’m Hoshika Armani: I’m sort of a new Hashishin but not as new as you. This is Atsushi Amano, he’s also a Hashishin and a mentor of mine.” She explained. Hashimoto thought it was rather interesting to see Hoshika being more bossy than her mentor. Atsushi flicked his head back to look at Hashimoto.

“When it comes to fighting: of course I’m the strong one here. I may not seem to be strong since all I use is this axe, but we’re all unique in our own ways.” Atsushi informed Hashimoto who then brought up a question he had earlier during the incident in the village.

“I noticed how you two fight differently. You don’t seem to possess such spirits like her being able to use flames. How does that work?”

The two tilted their heads in confusion. “Are you not aware of ‘Spiritual Brutality’?” Hoshika asked.

“I’ve heard of it—or should I say, learnt to control my Spiritual Brutality in order to prevent myself unleashing bloodlust,” Hashimoto said, sitting up straighter with his elbows on the arm rest.

“For someone like you, whose father was a legendary Hashishin, I’m surprised he hasn’t taught you much about it,” Hoshika said with a sigh, folding her arms. “But yeah, you’re right about that. Spiritual Brutality needs to be controlled or else the individual who’s fighting will begin to lose control. To be more precise, Spiritual Brutality flows in our blood, and is known to be what drives a human into a bloodlust state whenever they make a fighting vow, mainly occurring when killing someone. And—”

“—you’d need to go through an excessive amount of training and exercises in order to keep yourself from going berserk,” Atsushi took over with a smug grin.

“That’s what I was gonna say, asshole! Anyway, Spiritual Brutality also kicks in when an individual witnesses a murder,” she continued., “However, that's a rare case. From what we saw though: you reached the bloodlust state when you watched your parents get slaughtered. You might need to consider going through more exercises, Hashishins aren’t meant to lose control even when they watch someone they care about die.”

“I see… “ Hashimoto noted. “My dad didn’t want me to go deep into Spiritual Brutality training, he wanted me to learn the extremely difficult basics he followed without unlocking too much of my potential. I assume you’ve put yourself in different kinds of training to control your flames?”

“Correct. I was able to maintain my stability of Spiritual Brutality by adapting my anger into fighting. It was a tough process, but in the end my anger became a useful factor to convert it to fire.”

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“And I…” Atsushi trailed off dramatically. “...went through intense training to have my body adapt to chopping and hitting anything!” He lifted his axe and spun it around until the top part of the axe was shown. “By maintaining my Spiritual Brutality, I’m able to channel the energy on either side of the axe. Let’s say the spiritual energy goes to the sharp side: it allows me to chop any kind of material like I’m chopping a tree. If the energy travels to the back of it, I can smash things with it like a sledgehammer!”

Atsushi sat back with a proud look, Hashimoto was amazed by his kind of ability while Hoshika gave Atsushi a disgusted side eye.

“You make me cringe every time you pull that expression of yours,” Hoshika muttered,shaking her head.

“When will you ever be proud of your mentor’s achievements?” Atsushi raised his eyebrow and sighed.

While the two chatted, Hashimoto’s eyes gazed out of the window he sat beside. Trees blurred past at the speed of light, dancing through the wind. He smiled as the position he sat in reminded him of the previous mission taking place in the city, also allowing him to look out the window, eyes to wander. He had always wanted to live in urban areas just to enjoy a brand new experience. Now, on their way to Saitama, Hashimoto had to keep his patience throughout the 2-3 hour-long journey. He shook his head after the outside scenery distracted him, bringing the attention of the two other Hashishins.

“Do you two know anything about whoever that was back then?” Hashimoto asked curiously.

“The dark-figured man? We’ve never seen such an entity until he arrived to slaughter everyone at the village.” Hoshika looked down at her lap before bringing her hands together. “What frightens me is how he was able to obtain electricity abilities… or more specifically, Electrical Mastery.”

“Is a lightning user a rare phenomenon?” Hashimoto wondered.

“Not just that.. It takes a person to have the balls to put themselves through harsh training.” Atsushi added. “The types of training and exercises they’d need to go through are unknown. There are no clear theories as to what they need to do, other than the idea of getting struck by lightning but that sounds too dumb to be true.”

They sat in silence as they thought about the mysterious lightning user. A question remained at the back of Hoshika’s mind since she wasn’t sure if she should bring it up in case it's personal in some way, soon pushed her question in front of her mind as it was ready to be said out loud.

“Hope you don’t mind me asking this, Hashi. Why did your dad refrain himself from fighting? I heard he's supernatural at fighting… so, why?”

Hashimoto gazed into her eyes while his mind wandered through his memories with his dad.

“He made a promise to everyone in the village, especially to my mom, that he would never fight ever again. He never addressed any other reasoning.” Hashimoto clarified, looking back out of the window. “Now that I look back on it, he always meditated whenever he could.”

Hoshika’s eyes widened. “Could the reason for him to refrain from battling is to stabilize his Spiritual Brutality?” she theorized, which rang a bell in Atsushi’s mind.

“No, no, that seems like a logical thing for someone like him to do. All those years as a Hashishin must’ve made him incredibly weak to the point that meditation was the only way of preventing his bloodlust from being unleashed.” Atsushi supported her theory. “Are you proud of me this time?”

Hoshika playfully glared at him. “Yeah, for once.”

Hashimoto recalled some days when his dad missed his meditation sessions. Her theory and Atsushi’s additional reasoning made sense. There were nights where he could hear his dad’s faint agonizing groans coming from his room, then later on silence once a thud was heard. Hold on… What was the reason his mom randomly had bruises? Can it be because-

“Another thing to point out, when you got kicked hard by that shadow creep, you returned to the fight as a completely different person.” Hoshika said, yawning as she had her arms wrapped around herself.

“Uh, when did that happen?” Hashimoto had a puzzled look.

“Huh? Right when you were gonna attack the enemy with a scythe, you got launched away from his blow...”

“I don’t remember anything after I charged in with a scythe to attack, everything went black and then I woke up in the backseat of a car.”

“That scythe must’ve been behind what caused you to be in that state.. but that could just be a stretch. When one of the agents carefully held it up to put it away, nothing happened to them.” Hoshika noted to herself.

“We might need to investigate even further to check what's up with the scythe, it must have some sort of energy only you can feel, but that’s just a theory of mine.” Atsushi spoke, a hand went to rub his arms to warm himself. “Anyone else feeling cold or is it just me?”

“Now that you’ve mentioned it, I do find it cold here” Hashimoto agreed, the three began to shiver with agents on board also aware of the sudden temperature change.

Snowflakes slowly pulled down by gravity as things got colder. Outside of the window showcased specks of snow showering over them, each agent looking out with worry. Hoshika, Hashimoto, and Atsushi watched the snow fall, their hands gradually getting numb as they rubbed them together.

“H-How is this possible? We’re in a month where there shouldn’t be any snow..” Hashimoto felt a sense of danger to occur any second now.

In the opposite row at the far end of the passenger car stood a suited man. He wore a thin hood under his white buttoned shirt and black gloves. With his hands comfortably tucked in his pockets, he raised his head before taking them out.

“I think Hoshika’s gotten so calm that the environment around her finally cooled!” Atsushi laughed, causing Hoshika to fume over him.

“Why you-!”

“Let me freeze you all to your heart's content,” The hooded man announced.