Blows struck like thunder, yet failed to echo in Kenji’s domain.
Claw slash. Punch. Bite. Tail whip.
Haruo used the classics.
Each strike sent needles stabbing into Cal’s brain.
The last hit sent his telekinetic bubble flying a little too close to the sleeping Jayson for comfort.
He grabbed the boy with a thought and flew him over to use as a human shield.
Haruo, under Kenji’s control, didn’t slow, forcing him to send Jayson floating to the other end of the room.
“Dick move, kid.”
Kenji snarled.
The bloody writing on the walls, ceiling and floors flared.
Spectral chains shot out. Red, like the blood they emerged from. They failed to find purchase on the telekinetic bubble, but succeeded at congesting the space Cal could move in.
He dropped the bubble and shifted to the side about a foot.
Haruo’s massive clawed hand speared past his head.
He grabbed the wrist with a thought and twisted the arm in the chains.
“Bad battlefield awareness, kid.”
“Just shut the fuck up!”
Cal suddenly appeared next to Haruo, placing an amiable arm over the boy’s shoulder.
“Listen, kid. You don’t clutter the battlefield like this,” he gestured at the tangle of chains and Haruo struggling to get his massive bulk through, “when he’s big, strong and fast. You don’t want to mess with his mobility.”
Kenji wanted to fire off a curse, any curse, yet they slipped through his thoughts like water through a sieve.
The spectral chains were strong.
Haruo had to really put in effort to break them.
Each one destroyed darkened the piece of bloody writing it had emerged from.
“So, you want to tell me what you and your evil little group were actually doing here?”
“You’ll find out, except I’m going to make it a thousand times worse for you. You’ll be begging me to burn you alive after I get done.”
“Vicious little rat, aren’t you?”
The air around the plates down Haruo’s spine wavered like the haze coming off a hot road or a desert mirage. He rose, standing straighter, swelling his broad chest.
“Seriously? You know you’re right next to me? And obviously you’re little spatial trick isn’t working. Here, let me help you make the right decision.”
Cal took Kenji by the shoulders and moved the boy in front of him.
“We’ve got ourselves a good old human shield chicken stand off here. Do you care about yourself more than your teammate? Let’s find out.”
The air around Haruo’s cavernous mouth distorted, rippling out in circular waves.
“You’ve got anti-radiation spells? An artifact? What about for the heat? I mean, I’m in power armor and you’re in regular clothes. You really trust their enchantments? And no helmet? That’s just reckless.”
Kenji cursed him out.
Haruo released the breath attack.
The energy was invisible to the normal human eyes. They’d only see it through the rippling distortion along its length of travel and in the effects on everything around it.
It concentrated in a beam as thick around as the man’s tree trunk-sized scaly thighs. It was so concentrated in fact that a normal person could stand a few feet from the beam with only a minor sunburn. That same person would instantly be vaporized once the beam hit something. All that energy would be released, billowing out in a devastating explosion. Heat enough to melt steel in an instant. Massive amounts of radiation enough to turn an elephant into a bloody river of goo as its body’s cellular structure broke down.
It seemed that the boy truly overestimated his ability.
Cal threw a telekinetic shield up in front of the boy, extending it until it contained Haruo inside a bubble. He made it completely impenetrable and seamlessly molded around the spectral chains.
He was mostly safe from the radiation inside his armor and other telekinetic forcefield, but the two boys weren’t.
They were evil little shits, but he needed them alive and in relatively good condition for the information in their brains.
“You were an instant away from bloody goo flowing out of every hole. I’m talking even your pores. Seriously, how stupid are you? Which asks the question? If you’re a moron… how did you do all of this? Tell me. Who or whom, made the you of now possible?”
Harou poured on the radiation, disintegration the spectral chains trapped in the bubble with him.
Cal sealed the holes as they were created.
The readings in his HUD were good.
Only a negligible amount leaked out.
“You know what, kid.”
“I don’t fucking care. Just shut up!”
He shut Kenji’s mouth with a thought, ignoring the muffled curses.
“I think we’re done here. I tried to give you a chance, but you’re just so delusional in your arrogance. Level 50? Your precious Level 50, all those relics, all the training. Two years. It amounts to nothing to me. You live because I let you and that’s because you have something I want. If you don’t cooperate then what do I need you alive for? This is your last chance.”
He unsealed the boy’s mouth.
“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll fuck your wife! Your daughter—”
“You’ve got all these plans. Think you’re so smart. Guess what… all those paths you had in front of you? All those options? They aren’t yours anymore. They’re mine and they lead where I want them to.”
Haruo stopped his breath attack and began pounding on the invisible bubble.
“He could do that all day, but I have to be other places.”
Time tended to get funky when going in and out of domains and other real world adjacent spaces. Nothing too crazy. More like minutes or hours at most, not years.
Still, seconds could make a huge difference in the battle outside and he had already spent long enough in the domain.
Perhaps, luck would be on his side and the minutes in Kenji’s domain would translate to seconds out in the real world.
“First things first.”
He broke down the radioactive particles inside his telekinetic bubble.
Haruo needed to be brought back to human form and he was resistant but not invulnerable to his own radiation in that state.
Once that was done he turned his attention to Kenji.
He seized control of the boy’s mind and wound down Haruo’s transformation before putting the man to sleep.
The disgusting little organ close to Kenji’s heart vibrated. Displeasure turned to fear as it felt Cal’s attention fall on it.
“I’ve seen some gross things and you’re right up there.”
It wasn’t truly alive and it was clearly evil so he didn’t hesitate to render it into microscopic pieces that the boy’s body could absorb without harm… probably.
The bone circlet around Haruo’s head crumbled to dust.
With his work finished he forced Kenji to close the domain.
He was prepared this time and the disorientation lasted a blink of his eyes.
“One last thing.” He turned Kenji around to look the boy in the eyes as he erased the memories of their one-sided confrontation.
He had already done the same with Jayson and Haruo.
Kenji joined the rest and Cal stacked the two boys on one shoulder like sacks of fertilizer while holding Haruo under his other arm.
“Crap.”
His helmet fed him some mixed news.
Satellite tracking showed that the masked rider had escaped and was heading north on the highway at an impressive speed for being on a motorcycle.
He put in a quick text to get that taken care of.
The kekkaishi boy had indeed been freed of Cal’s telekinetic cage when it had disappeared as he went into Kenji’s domain. The boy was trying to be sneaky with his escape plan.
He put in a few subtle nudges to get that taken care of.
The rest of the fight had turned against the monsters and outworld invaders.
The grounds surrounding the Imperial Palace were in the hands of the JSDF and independent fighters. While fights continued to rage out in the surrounding area focused on the emergency shelters.
He flew out and began helping the people.
Enough leveling.
Enough death.
----------------------------------------
Marloes glared at the nearby ritual circle.
She had expressed her displeasure at setting up a medical tent on the barren, blasted dirt.
Too much evil had seeped in the soil.
Alas, the medics knew better and many of the fighters that had bled to take the palace grounds back from the monsters and invaders couldn’t survive a trip by wheeled vehicle through an active battlefield.
What was worse was that the JSDF only had one helicopter to take the most grievously wounded to the hospital. The remaining handful attached to this section of Tokyo were busy running combat ops.
Finishing her periodic check for monsters, she stepped back into the huge tent.
The scents were schizophrenic.
There were the sterile scents of alcohol and other medical type junk.
She knew them well for she had spent plenty of time in a hospital room.
There were the dirty scents of sweat, blood, piss and shit.
She knew them well for she had spent plenty of time in battle.
Marloes made her way past the screams of the dead and the dying towards the back of the tent.
Miko Hiromi sat on a cot with her still bloodless stump held up by a sling. Her hand was in a sealed plastic bag on her lap.
Dashing Bandit’s Celebration’s last plushie floated out of her way.
His blue spandex suit had seen better days. Cotton tufts stood out from multiple cuts and gouges on his fluffy body. The red cape was a tattered ruin. One shiny plastic eye was gone, ripped out by monster claws.
He was the mahou shoujo’s strongest so it made sense that he was the last remaining. She had gathered the remains of the rest and placed them in her bag of holding.
“Kekkaishi Endo gives his regards for your recovery. Regrettably, he was recalled to his unit. He begs forgiveness.”
The boy had bowed and apologized profusely outside the tent. He had felt it a betrayal to not stand watch by the miko’s bedside until the end.
“He doesn’t have to do that.”
The miko’s voice was small, soft.
More the girl she truly was than the exalted shrine maiden.
Marloes was struck by how Hiromi was swallowed up by her robes, still bloody from the battle. She hadn’t truly noticed during the battle.
Children.
She was fighting alongside children.
They were making children fight alongside them.
“How is your arm?”
“It’s starting to hurt and bleed a little…”
Dashing Bandit Celebration had been practically vibrating in the small folding stool and this appeared to be her limit. She shot up and threw her hands in the air. “They won’t evac her!”
“Please… don’t shout. You’ll disturb the others,” Miko Hiromi squeaked.
“Ah, sorry, Hiromi-chan, but they’re making me mad!” She pouted. “Your hand got cut off fighting for them and they won’t give you a helicopter ride.”
“My life is not in danger like the others.”
“But you heard the medical guy? You have, like, one hour to get to the hospital if you want to stick that back on.” She pointed at the bagged hand.
“It’s a stasis bag,” Marloes said.
They were exceptionally rare and she had thought that Hiromi was getting special treatment. Perhaps for being her level at such a young age or perhaps a familial connection to someone with power in the system. Government or JSDF.
Dashing Bandit Celebration waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not a true stasis spell. More like a time slow. They cast it on her…” she leaned in to whisper, “stump,” then straightened as if that hadn’t been obvious, “anyways. A slow time spell and a high level one at that to buy even that much time. Point is. I’ve checked the schedule list. Hiromi-chan is far down it.”
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“Have you tried the Omninet?”
“What for?”
“Find someone that can do a fast transport?”
“Duh!” Dashing Bandit Celebration slapped her own forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? I would’ve used my guy,” she gestured toward the floating plushie, “if he wasn’t too damaged to carry you, Hiromi-chan.”
“It is okay.”
“No it’s not. Hold on.” Dashing Bandit Celebration took out her smartphone and started tapping and swiping away.
“I—” Marloes hesitated. Not all news was good or even if it was good it would bring sadness. However, they deserved to know. “I oversaw the— the collection of Shinigami Yuta’s—”
Why was it so hard? She was no stranger to death. Yuta hadn’t even reached adulthood, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. She had been a child when she started fighting monsters and bad men. One among many. One of the few to get past the ripe old age of 20. The milestone hadn’t been that long ago and yet it felt so far behind her.
“The JSDF collected his remains after mages determined that no worm monsters survived… what I did. He will be taken to his family.”
“It’s not your fault, Sparkle-sama,” Dashing Bandit Celebration said with a sad smile. “Remember what he asked for? You did that. You saved him from the worms.”
Point of fact, she should’ve prevented him from being infected in the first place.
Miko Hiromi grabbed Marloe’s gaze and held it with a strength beyond her short years. “Death is not the end. Yuta’s spirit thanks you for sparing him that fate. It is what you would’ve wanted for yourself. What we all would’ve wanted.”
Marloes nodded after a moment. Neither accepting or rejecting Hiromi’s words.
“We should go to the funeral. I mean, if his family is okay with that. Since we were with him last.” Dashing Bandit Celebration glanced at Marloes. “If you’re okay with that. If not, I’m willing to step forward.”
“No, you’re right. It is the least—”
Finely-honed combat instincts kicked in.
A nudge in the back of her mind.
Potential danger, not necessarily imminent unless things went bad.
“I’m suddenly nervous and giddy, which means…” Dashing Bandit Celebration pulled out a pistol and a wand from her bag of holding.
Marloes drew her wand of laser pointer. Forming her shield would make a lot of noise and light so she left it.
Hiromi placed her hand on the side table.
“Please stay here Miko-sama.” Marloes eyed the other mahou shoujo. “Please protect her.”
“That’s what I was going to do since I’m not exactly at my best right now… but, shout if you need me.” Dashing Bandit Celebration waved.
Marloes moved through the medical tent.
Past small rooms sectioned off by curtains, like Hiromi’s.
Past rows of cots filled with the least injured.
She stopped when she got close to the entrance.
New intakes.
More bloody and battered fighters gathering in a loose line.
She let her eyes drift to each one in turn, studying, listening to the voice of instinct in her head.
Passing over men and women, boys and girls, she went back and forth several times before stopping on a boy in the middle.
14, maybe 15 years old.
Japanese appearance like any other.
Clothing and armor just like the rest.
His chestplate had the Japanese flag and the symbol of the Imperial Palace Guard.
Again, not out of place.
They prioritized talent and ability over age.
The spires had forced the nation to adapt.
Traditional seniority gave way to youth if said youth had power.
And yet…
She was certain.
She placed the greed dot on the boy’s forehead.
He must’ve lost his helmet in the fighting.
“Don’t move,” she said coldly. “Raise your hands. Don’t open your mouth. If I feel so much as a hint of a spell I will not hesitate.”
The boy complied.
She searched his eyes. Didn’t know what she was looking for, but quickly found what was missing.
Fear.
There was no fear.
“Everyone, please move away from the subject.”
It seemed that she had some cachet since they listened without more than a murmur of confusion.
The dot never wavered as she slowly walked toward the boy.
“You will walk backward out of this tent.”
Again the boy complied, slowly.
She matched him step for step.
The other fighters moved out of the way, moving further into the tent or back outside.
Dawn had arrived a short while ago.
She squinted against the glare.
JSDF soldiers posted outside the tent kept their automatic weapons at rest, but angled their bodies towards the boy.
Notoriety did have some benefits.
They knew her or of her, but not boy.
“I need an identity scan.”
“We don’t have the clearance—”
“Not for me. You do the scan.”
She’d know what to do if the boy’s file said that he was two years younger than he looked.
“On it.” The soldier called it in then took a picture.
The boy remained calm and silent through it all.
She kept her gaze locked to his. Didn’t like what she saw. Desensitization. She had seen the same in the mirror in her darkest times.
The two soldiers now had their guns pointed near the boy’s boots.
More soldiers approached from the sides of the tent, taking up positions.
Seconds felt like hours until the first soldier’s phone beeped.
The boy did nothing as the soldier lowered his gun to reach for his phone.
Marloes’ instincts shouted a warning.
She fired without hesitation.
A single bullet right on the dot.
A barrier unlike any other she had ever seen ate it.
The boy hadn’t moved, nor said a word. He smirked at her from behind the translucent black barrier.
Shapes seemed to swim inside the flat surface.
She stared into an abyss.
“Contact left!”
“Contact right!”
Automatic gun fire burst out.
“Hold fire! Barriers! I repeat, barriers! Watch for ricochets!”
There were none.
The soldiers didn’t see it, but Marloes did.
The bullets had been eaten, like hers.
Black walls closed in on them and the medical tent.
“Shit!”
The soldier was right.
Kekkaishi didn’t do barriers that moved.
Hell, Kekkaishi Endo was seen as a prodigy for being able to create barriers on the horizontal plane strong enough for a person to stand on for an extended period of time.
This kekkaishi was like Erika. Unprecedented strength through unknown means.
The boy waved then shot her a rude gesture before turning and running.
“Slow.”
She aimed for the back of his knee.
Nothing.
She couldn’t get through the barrier.
Sudden darkness descended over them.
“It’s above too!”
They moved closer to the encroaching wall.
“Open up on it!”
Do enough damage, break a barrier.
The black wall ate every bullet and spell the soldiers shot into it.
When it got with a few meters it did something none of them were prepared for.
Black hands reached out, snatching guns and dragging the hapless soldiers to them.
The shapes were human-like, emerging from the barrier’s inky depths.
Marloes shot the shoulder straps, saving the soldiers from the same fate.
They scrambled back, behind her, closer to the tent.
The walls continued their inexorable march.
She heard shouts from within.
The dark hands tore the fabric.
“I need a hole and quickly!”
Another way to bring down the barrier was to disrupt the kekkaishi’s concentration.
The boy was showing a high level of it considering he was maintaining it while not looking at it and running away.
One of the independent fighters pushed past the soldiers.
“I can do one, but not if that thing goes underground and I can’t do one big enough for any of us to crawl through before it gets us,” the bandaged woman said.
“Just big enough for me to get my arm past the barrier.”
“Where?”
Marloes calculated the wall’s rate of movement quickly and pointed at a spot on the barren dirt.
The woman rushed to it and placed her hand on the ground.
“Earth Tunnel.”
The ground rumbled and parted, creating a trench about half a meter deep and 3 meters long.
“Sorry. I used most of my mana in the fighting.”
“No. That’s good enough. Thank you. If you can push past your limits then go back in the tent and try to create a way out.”
Marloes tucked her wand of laser pointer away before laying on the ground and placing her arm in the trench.
She had the long, swan-like limbs of a model as one rich old pervert had once told her. The same limbs had then proceeded to knock him up and down that party floor. Her mahou shoujo uniform didn’t imply consent to be bothered by creeps.
She counted on the distance her long arm would buy her along with her enhanced mahou shoujo constitution.
The wailing ghosts in the wall hadn’t pulled the soldier’s into them instantaneously, the men and women had been able to pull themselves free with her help.
And she only needed a second.
The boy was still well within her range.
Grasping hands pulled at her hair.
She gasped.
It seemed that they were stronger now that they only had one target to focus on.
Deep, freezing cold struck her to the core.
Like she’d never know warmth again.
She twisted her head, bit at the black fingers only to bite her own tongue.
Fingers reached her shoulders, her back.
Her eyes drooped.
It’d be so easy.
Just close them and let herself be carried into the abyss.
No more pain.
Her iron will failed her.
Concentration fled.
The boy fled.
Bells tinkled.
The hands fled back into the barrier.
Clarity rushed into Marloes.
She saw the boy.
Picked her target.
Fired.
The .50 cal bullet shot up, tearing through the bottom of his boot and turning his foot into tattered chunks of exposed bone, dripping meat and hanging skin.
The sun shined down on them again.
The cold Marloes felt was that of the normal winter chill as her mahou shoujo constitution had been pushed to its limit.
She rose with a groan, feeling the aches and pains of several broken bones, untreated, and multiple burns, treated.
Dashing Bandit Celebration stood at the tent’s entrance, keeping Miko Hiromi’s stump elevated.
The girl clutched her torimono with a white-knuckled grip in her remaining hand.
“Thank you.”
“It was a small part. You saved us all.”
“Don’t be so modest, Hiromi-chan” Dashing Bandit Celebration. “Now! I will do my part.” She turned to her plushie floating next to her. “Go, Super Trash Panda! Pummel that boy into unconsciousness!”
----------------------------------------
He had a lot of practice by now at judging speed.
The masked rider was really eating up pavement on her biomechanical motorcycle monster or was monster motorcycle the more accurate term?
Her colorful red, yellow and white armor looked straight out of old TV shows. The long blue scarf trailing in the wind looked cool, but he questioned the color choice. It clashed a bit.
The motorcycle being a slick, matte gray and chrome was definitely cool looking.
It was a huge angular thing.
It shouldn’t have worked from an aerodynamic perspective, but it did have a jet engine that was putting out a lot more power than its size suggested.
He counted the time it took her to get from highway sign to highway sign.
They were in Kanji, but number were numbers.
Just about 600 miles per hour.
What was that in region appropriate kilometers per hour?
“1 to 1.6, right?”
He did the math.
The number was bigger in kmh. Thus more impressive. Maybe it was time he started thinking of things in metric.
God knows it’d make using the equipment easier.
Speaking of which he had forgotten the helmet.
He had the glasses in a pouch of holding, but they couldn’t handle the speed.
Cal was gonna complain.
He always wanted data. The closer to the action the better.
“Pfft, satellites are watching this whole thing anyways.” He spotted one in orbit and waved.
Besides, he was interrupting daddy daughter time for this. Not to mention seeing his nieces in person for the first time in literal decades. There were some dark times where he had thought he would never see them again. Fuck the dominion.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
It was an island unless the motorcycle could fly or turn into a submarine…
“Possible.”
Well, in any case the evil girl… damn shame that. It was harder to accept that kids could go full evil. He expected it from adults, but children? Man… totally sucked. At least he only needed to capture this one.
Cal seemed to think rehabilitation was possible.
“Right.”
He pondered how to catch the girl.
She had superhuman strength and durability, but 965.6064 KMH to 0 wasn’t something to take for granted. All that force had to go somewhere.
Grab the scarf?
Break a neck.
“Ah…”
He was overthinking it.
Sonic booms trailed in his wake as he dived out of the clouds.
The masked rider’s head went on a swivel.
She had showed impressive reflexes and reaction time as she had weaved around debris and the occasional monster that had tried its luck. Now, she was steering her motorcycle with her attention split between the road ahead of her and something much faster coming from behind.
He grabbed the rear of the motorcycle, crumpling metal in his fingers like it was tin foil.
Right.
Slow it down.
Grab it and her.
Fly away.
Drop her off.
Back to family time.
The scarf wrapped itself around his head.
He ripped it off.
The masked rider rose out of her seat as the motorcycle transformed into its robot mantis mode.
He had to admit it looked cool.
Like something straight out of TV and anime.
Unfortunately, for her he had been doing stuff like that from since before she had been born.
He took the kick in the face. Grabbed her ankle and gently slammed her into the pavement.
The robot mantis found itself minus its limbs by the time the masked rider climbed out of the small crater.
“Reon Miki, ah, sorry, that’s Miki Reon since I’m a visitor in your land.”
She struck an ‘X’-armed pose.
“That is cool.”
The beam cut across the pavement and through the median divider and sound wall on the far end.
He tapped her on the shoulder.
She threw a blazingly fast quadruple spinning kick in defiance of baseline human physics.
He blocked the last one on his arm.
She cried out and staggered back, gingerly putting weight on her injured leg.
“You’re under arrest, I guess. Not my deal, but come along or be brought, blah, blah, blah.”
She lunged.
He flicked her between the bug eyes of her colorful helmet.
She crumpled to the ground.
He approached the robot mantis.
“Listen, mantiscycle, you’re supposed to be as smart as a horse or something, so I’ll say this once. Come along quietly or I’ll turn you into a compact cube first.”
It meekly turned back into a motorcycle.
He piled the legs he had ripped off on the seat and cables helpfully slithered out to secure them.
Eron tossed the masked rider over his shoulder, grabbed the mantiscycle by its frame and took off into the sky.