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Chapter 8: Fallen Black

Oh, how happy we’d be if money could buy happiness.

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

“Hey, Shuugo! Sure has been a while, huh?”

Toki Shuugo was sitting atop an air conditioner unit on the roof of a multiuse building he’d trespassed his way into, gazing up at the sky as he pressed his phone to his ear.

“So, what the hell convinced you to call me? Kinda surprising to get a ring from a guy who’s been ignoring all my calls for who even knows how long.”

“...It’s been a while, Yousuke,” said Shuugo. He had indeed called up the leader of the biker gang Cruise, Kurumaya Yousuke...or rather, the former leader. For that matter, Cruise was a former biker gang as well. “And it’s not a big deal or anything. I was just hoping you could fix my wheels up. You’re working at a motorcycle shop these days, right?”

“Close—I’m managing the shop, actually! And okay, you got it. Bring it in whenever you’ve got time, and I’ll cut you a steep discount for the repairs.”

“Thanks. And...Yousuke?” said Shuugo. “Sorry.”

“Huh? What’s this all about?”

“When Cruise got taken down...” Shuugo began, then he hesitated. It had been about half a year since Cruise had gathered together in a convenience store parking lot to throw a celebration, only to be wiped out on the spot by a silver-haired convenience store clerk with heterochromia and a strange, inexplicable power. “You bowed down to that guy because you wanted to protect the rest of us, and I...I thought that made you a loser, and I really tore into you for it. So...sorry.”

“Ha ha ha... Okay, but seriously, where is all this coming from? Pretty sure this is the first time you’ve ever straight-up apologized to me.”

“It just hit me the other day. I realized that thinking you were acting like a loser made me the biggest loser of all.”

“Somebody’s really turned a new leaf, huh? Did something happen? And actually, the hell’re you up to these days, anyway?”

“Same thing as always,” Shuugo said with a bitter chuckle. “I’m rolling with a buncha dipshits, getting in stupid fights with stupid people, just like I did when I was a biker.”

Shuugo hung up, then he stood up from his seat on the air conditioner. As he walked over to the rail surrounding the side of the building, a girl with braided hair and glasses—Natsu Aki—lowered the binoculars she’d been peering through, looked over at him, and smiled mischievously.

“I heard that, Toks,” said Aki. “You just called us a bunch of dipshits, didn’t you? Rude!”

“Your fault for eavesdropping.”

“That Yousuke guy you were talking to was the leader of the gang you were part of, right? And you were his second-in-command, or something?” asked Aki.

“Right,” Shuugo grunted.

“Huuuh. So I guess that means he’s tougher than you, right?”

“Nah. We never threw down for real, but I probably would’ve won if we had. Being the boss ain’t all about being the best fighter.”

“Oooh, yeah, I gotcha. All that stuff about having to be a natural leader, or whatever?”

“Something like that. Yousuke’s...yeah, I’d call him a natural leader. He’s got what it takes. Might just see it that way ’cause my new boss is such a jackass, though.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, no kidding,” said Aki with an uproarious laugh.

“So, how’s the peep show going?” asked Shuugo.

“A-okay! I finally got a nice, long look at the real one,” Aki said with a victorious smirk, gesturing with her thumb toward a notably tall building behind her. That building was the property of Habikino Hatsuhiko, and one of Hearts’s many hideouts. “Hundred and One Wolfies: the power to make duplicates of himself. The duplicates are exactly as strong as the original, and once they take a certain amount of damage—enough to make ’em pass out, basically—they go poof.”

Aki explained the particulars of Hatsuhiko’s power in intense, specific depth. Her power, Head Hunting, allowed her to learn everything there was to know about a Player’s power if she caught so much as a glimpse of them. No matter what trump card her opponent might be holding in reserve, she would always see through it, peering into the deepest reaches of their heads and analyzing everything about their powers that could be found in their minds.

“Then it sounds like everything Akutagawa said was right on the money,” said Shuugo.

“Ah, well, most everything. Y’know how Gawanagi said that this Hatsuhiko guy claimed he could make a hundred and one of himself? Turns out his actual max is more like one-twenty-five.”

“Then why the hell’d he name it that?”

“Probably to trick people, I guess? Like, wait till they take down a hundred and one of him and think they’ve won, then have the hundred and second sucker punch ’em right when they least expect it. Talk about a cheap trick, huh? Though, then again, maybe he just got really fussy about making the name sound good,” said Aki before going on to spoil all of the remaining details of Hatsuhiko’s power with a stunningly casual air. It was almost like she was reading the strategy guide for a video game.

“Your power’s as wild as ever, huh?” commented Shuugo.

“C’mon, Toks, what’re you buttering me up for?” said Aki with a slightly bashful shrug. “And it’s not exactly all-purpose, y’know? I’m totally useless in a fight, my power’s got a buncha downsides, and it doesn’t even work on folks with really out-there abilities like Fanfan... Ah, right! Speaking of, how’re things going down on that end? We should probably give her a call, or— Huh? Wait, Toks? You’re leaving already?!”

“Yeah,” Shuugo replied offhandedly as he walked away. “I’ve got all the info I need.”

“Oh? In that case, guess my work here is done! Man, I’m tired—my eyes and my brain’re totally pooped! Stakeouts just aren’t worth the effort,” Aki said as she stretched, binoculars still in hand. Then she took a moment to grab the convenience store bag that was lying by her feet and shove all the pastry wrappers and empty plastic bottles scattered about the vicinity into it.

“Yeah, thanks,” Shuugo grunted.

Aki’s eyes widened. “Whoa, what’s the deal? You never say thank you, Toks!”

“Yeah, don’t read into it.”

“Well, no need to thank me, anyway! We’re a team, right?” Aki said with a grin as she gave Shuugo a spirited thumbs-up.

“A team, huh...? Seems like people throw that word around so much, it barely even means anything,” Shuugo grunted.

“Ha ha ha! Yeah, I know, right?” Aki said with a chuckle, not even trying to argue against Shuugo’s cynical perspective. “I mean, it hasn’t even been a year since we all met, we’ve got no team spirit, our goals are all over the place, we barely know anything about each other’s tastes or how we think, and considering who our boss is, calling us a team’s probably wrong on a super basic level. I’m gonna be real here—if one of you guys died tomorrow, I wouldn’t shed a tear. But, y’know...when all’s said and done, I want our team to win.”

For a moment, Shuugo paused.

“That’s what being on a team’s all about in the end, isn’t it?” asked Aki.

“Hah! You got that right.”

With that, Shuugo departed from the rooftop. He set off, jackknife in hand, to take on his enemy—a shared enemy that he and his teammates had decided he’d be best suited to dealing with.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of town, another member of Fallen Black was keeping up his end.

A short distance away from a seaside factory—or rather, what remained of it after it’d been reduced to little more than a scorch mark on the landscape by Toki Shuugo and Hachisuka Happa’s battle—was an area that had been used to store an incredible quantity of shipping containers. Said area was, at the moment, an actively raging inferno. The massive stacks of shipping containers had turned the plot of land into something of a maze, and the concrete paths that ran between them were filled with gouts of flame and plumes of black smoke.

In the middle of the conflagration, perched atop a particularly tall pile of containers, the girl who’d transformed the area into a sea of flame stood and looked out over her handiwork. She was Hachisuka Happa, a high-ranking member of Hearts, and her power was BOMB Voyage: the ability to spontaneously ignite any air that she had exhaled, transforming it into a massive midair explosion. Excelling in firepower, range, and pure lethality, her power and the skillful manner with which she used it had allowed Happa to take down numerous Players and become Hearts’s most capable fighter by an astonishing margin. Scores of Players had fallen before her, unable to fight back against the one-sided, long-distance barrage of explosions she subjected them to. Even Toki Shuugo, Fallen Black’s assault leader, had lost without ever managing to so much as close in on her.

Rainfall was Happa’s one weakness, but the sky on that particular day happened to be as clear and cloudless as could be. It was a bright, beautiful, sweltering summer day. Happa could hardly have asked for better conditions for using her explosions to their fullest effect—the only thing that could’ve made it better for her would’ve been an ideal arena to fight in. And, well, what do you know, that’s precisely what she’d had set up.

The maze of shipping containers before her was owned by a trading company that was financially backed by Habikino Hatsuhiko, and he had arranged it specifically for Happa’s sake. That was why a number of the containers scattered about the field had been stuffed with gunpowder. Happa’s explosions were powerful enough on their own, and if she set one off in the right place, it would be supplemented by a secondary, even more powerful explosion as one of the containers was blown to pieces. Fighting there made her already potent abilities an order of magnitude scarier. This was her territory—a sanctuary made just for her—and any foe foolish enough to take the bait and set foot within it would be blown away, their corpse incinerated by a hellish inferno. Here, she was unbeatable...

“God dammit! What’s with this kid?!”

...at least, in theory.

Happa gazed out into the raging flames beneath her with a look of irritation on her face. In spite of the stifling heat of her surroundings, a bead of cold sweat ran down her cheek. She was looking at one point in particular—a person. He had strolled into her territory on her invitation, unarmed and alone...so of course, she’d blown him the hell up, unleashing a one-sided salvo of fiery death, just like she always did.

She’d set off blast after blast, holding nothing back from the very start of the fight, even igniting a gunpowder-packed shipping container right next to her target, just for the sake of overkill. The resulting inferno had been so vast, you’d think a napalm bomb had been set off. It had been such an intense display that it had felt like Happa was trying to melt her opponent rather than burn him. Her offensive had been so overwhelming that taking it at point-blank range would evaporate anyone, erasing them from the world without a trace...again, in theory.

What happened instead left Happa speechless. Within the inferno, she could just barely make out the outline of a person—a small-statured boy. He had a pair of headphones over his ears, their cord plugged into a handheld game console. The heat around him was so overwhelming that the shipping containers near him, and even the asphalt beneath them, were beginning to melt...but he was just standing there, placidly playing a video game.

“What the hell, seriously...? This is, like, not what I signed up for! I thought Haneko’s power was supposed to be melting that guy’s brain right about now!” Happa muttered with a mixture of rage and despair. She just couldn’t reach him. The flames, the explosions, the hot air—everything she threw at him, all the combined powers of science, finance, and the supernatural she had at her disposal—all of it had proved incapable of making him so much as break a sweat. It was like he’d slipped into a gap in reality itself, rendering himself untouchable.

“Yeah...I remember now. This is... How to put it...? This is the sort of character I am, I guess,” the boy quietly muttered to himself from his isolated pocket of calm within a world dominated by flame and heat. “I’m the sort of ultra broken character who barely takes his battles seriously and crushes his opponents’ spirits without even trying.”

Akutagawa Yanagi was the wielder of Dead Space: a power that put the spaces between to work, a power that displayed its true essence when used for the sake of defense. No matter what sort of attack was thrown at him, he could perceive a gap in it, tear it open, and slip right through unscathed. As such, the moment the flames and explosions should have touched him, they emerged on his other side as if the space he occupied didn’t even exist, or as if he were surrounded by an invisible barrier made of impossibly sharp blades, incessantly slicing everything that tried to touch him.

“Getting pissed off and throwing a fit really wasn’t like me at all...but now that I’ve gotten some real sleep, I can finally think again. Yeah...this just goes to show how important proper rest really is,” Yanagi muttered disinterestedly, still focused on his game.

Happa, meanwhile, was getting desperate. She set off even grander explosions than before, practically carpet-bombing the whole area, but she couldn’t singe even a single hair on Yanagi’s head. The flames and explosions went without saying, but it didn’t end there—he was so cut off that not even the deafening roar they caused reached his ears. Yanagi hadn’t heard a single sound from the outside world since the battle had begun. He’d been listening to his game’s music the whole time, and nothing else. Happa had been desperately screaming and shouting from way up above about her reasons for staking it all on the War, her tragic history, and the cause behind her attachment to money, but Yanagi didn’t hear a word of it.

“No high score this run, huh?” Yanagi mumbled as he reached a stopping point in his game, then looked up, glaring with irritation at Happa. She was still standing atop her pile of shipping containers, putting her heart and soul into shouting at him.

She spoke of her grudge against the father who had abandoned her, leaving a mountain of debt behind. She spoke of her disdain for her fool of a mother, who’d worked herself to the bone trying to pay that debt off. She declared that she would never let herself be like her parents, that she still wore her school uniform after dropping out for personal and practical reasons, and so on and so forth. She screamed her heart out, and Yanagi heard precisely nothing. He could see her shouting, but he had no interest in what she was saying, and simply stretched a hand out toward her.

“...You’re wide open.”

With the slightest of motions, Yanagi spread his pointer and middle fingers apart. In that same moment, a roar rang out as the air in the direction he gestured at was sucked into a vortex. He had forced open space itself, dislocating the air within and twisting it into a raging whirlwind—localized in just such a way as to slam into Happa’s back, pushing her with incredible force and knocking her off the tower of shipping containers. She’d been so preoccupied recalling everything that had led her to this point that she hadn’t noticed what was happening until it was far too late to stop it. Gravity took hold at once, pulling her down into the still blazing inferno that awaited her below.

“You know...the moment you decided to go somewhere high up and far away before you started attacking, you basically told me that you could make explosions and fire, but couldn’t control them,” said Yanagi.

He had heard all about Happa’s power from Shuugo, and knew that Happa always made a point of generating her explosions from a distance, taking great care to never make any too close to herself. That led to the clear conclusion that her power let her generate explosions, but not manipulate them after the fact. All the aftereffects and collateral damage they caused were just as dangerous for her as they were for her opponent.

“You’re the one who set this whole place on fire. You should’ve known what would happen if you fell. It’s blazingly obvious...literally, I guess,” Yanagi muttered, still sounding utterly disinterested.

The nature of his power had made defeating Happa the simplest of tasks. In fact, he could hardly have been better suited to taking on an opponent with intense firepower like hers. He could’ve made it a lot flashier, certainly—there were a thousand ways in which he could have overwhelmed her—but instead, Yanagi had chosen to defeat his foe in the manner that required the least effort on his part. That was, after all, the most rational strategy for him to choose, and he strove to live a rational life.

“People can’t be purely rational. I get that...but there’s no real need for it to be pure, is there? The way I see it, going far out of your way to force yourself to live purely rationally is irrational in and of itself,” Yanagi mumbled as he turned his attention back to his game. Chiptune music rang out from his headphones, and Happa’s agonized wailing didn’t so much as register to him. He showed no respect for his opponent, no interest in the backstories or growth of others, no sympathy for his foe’s loss, and no pride in his own victory. To him, such matters were nothing more than a bothersome waste of time.

“Hooray! You did it, Akutagawa! You won!” a voice shouted from the depths of Yanagi’s mind. He scowled as it seemed to reverberate through his skull, realizing with no small amount of distaste how familiar he’d become with hearing other people’s voices speaking to him in his mind.

Don’t talk to me, Fantasia, he replied reluctantly. I just started a new game.

“Wh-Why do you have to be like that?! That’s so mean! I stayed quiet through the whole battle, didn’t I?!”

...

“You’re ignoring me?! Really?! Wh-Why are you being so nasty to me?! Haven’t I been keeping Nega-Yanagi under control for you this whole time?!”

The voice in Yanagi’s mind—the voice of Yusano Fantasia, which had been transplanted into him—was noisy, to be sure, but it was nothing compared to the discomfort that Nega-Yanagi’s mental voice had caused.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be a sleep-deprived zombie right now, you know?”

Right... Thanks for that.

“I sang you lullabies and everything!”

I’m...not going to thank you for that part. At all.

“Huh? W-Wait, why not?”

...Because you’re completely tone-deaf.

“N-No way... You’re kidding, right? Nobody’s ever said that to me before! It can’t be true, right...?”

...Society’s been pretty gentle to you, hasn’t it?

“H-Huh? You mean...wait, no waaaaaaaaay?!”

Judging by Fantasia’s wail of horrified confusion, it seemed likely she’d been under the impression that she was a good singer. Yanagi just ignored her and started walking away, the inferno before him parting like the Red Sea with each step.

Come to think of it...this might be a stupid question, but, Yanagi said internally without bothering to pause his game, Fantasia...how exactly are you keeping Nega-Yanagi “under control”?

Fantasia’s power, Sex Eclipse, was a power of fragmented identities. It had allowed the personality known as Yusano Fantasia to inhabit Yanagi’s mind, where she’d suppressed Nega-Yanagi. It was the one manner she’d been able to propose to treat the symptoms of his condition, though it didn’t serve as a complete cure.

“Huh? I mean, nothing that fancy, really... I just sneaked up behind him and put him in a sleeper hold, that’s all.”

...

Apparently, the process was a lot more physical than Yanagi had anticipated. Nega-Yanagi was “under control” in the “caught in a literal submission hold” sense of the phrase. Yanagi’s only perception of the world that Nega-Yanagi inhabited—that is to say, his only perception of his own mindscape—was auditory, but by using her power to visit it, Fantasia had apparently stepped into it in a physical sense and had engaged in actual close combat. It had been a physical battle in a mental world...whatever that even meant.

“Oh, and he looked like he was going to wake up a little while ago, so I gut-punched him and put him right back out again.”

A gut punch...? Seriously?

“Yup! Like, wham! Wham! Wham!”

So, multiple gut punches? Was that necessary?

For some reason, the idea of a personality that had been born from his own consciousness being brutally beaten by a middle school girl within his mindscape was difficult for Yanagi to accept. Nega-Yanagi had put him through hell, but when Yanagi imagined him being treated so roughly, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy.

“S-Sorry for being rough, okay...? I couldn’t make him go away, so it was my only choice! How else was I supposed to make him be quiet?” Fantasia pouted, apparently picking up on Yanagi’s discomfort. Her power could fragment her own personality, but it couldn’t wipe away the personality that was Nega-Yanagi, so she’d needed to enter Yanagi’s mindscape to shut him up personally instead. It was a stopgap measure, at best, but it had bought them the time that they needed.

So, unless I keep my promise or somebody kills Hamai Haneko, he won’t go away entirely... Speaking of, how are things going on the other side, Fantasia? Yanagi mentally muttered.

“Moving along pretty well! Moving along, and moving ahead,” Fantasia proudly replied. “Trust me, we have it totally under control!”

For the past several weeks, Hamai Haneko had been staying in a top-class luxury hotel—the sort where a single night’s stay cost somewhere in excess of a hundred thousand yen. That being said, in truth, it might have been more accurate to say she was being confined there.

Hatsuhiko had arranged the room for her so that she could hide away from Akutagawa Yanagi and the rest of Fallen Black. Her lodgings were spacious and luxurious, featuring the finest of furniture and appliances, and she could have any meal she desired delivered via room service by placing a single phone call. The hotel even featured a pool and a spa, both of which she could make use of whenever she pleased. It was almost too opulent to count as a hideaway. Haneko was living the sort of hotel lifestyle that would make anyone jealous...or at least, she could’ve been.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s...okay... I’ll be okay, for sure...”

Haneko was curled up in a corner of her room, her blankets pulled over her head, muttering in a low, disturbing tone that made it sound like she was chanting a curse. She told herself that she’d be fine over and over again, desperate to convince herself it was true. It was the middle of the day, but her curtains were shut and the room was dark and gloomy. The windows offered an unobstructed view of the cityscape and the ocean beyond, and the room’s rate had been set at an exorbitant price on account of that scenery, but she hadn’t opened the curtains even once since she’d taken up residence there. She hadn’t visited the pool or the spa either. She’d almost entirely isolated herself from the outside world, living her days in fear.

“It’s okay, it’s okay... Hatsuhiko said I’d be safe here no matter what... I have guards, and he said we have fake safe houses everywhere... It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll be okay...”

To put it frankly: Haneko was a coward. She was as timid as could be, prone to overthinking, and incredibly pessimistic to boot. Although Hatsuhiko had told her that she’d be fine as long as she hid in the hotel, Haneko had immediately jumped to the conclusion that if she had to hide at all, it was all but guaranteed she was going to be targeted. As soon as she’d had that thought, her mind had latched onto it and wouldn’t let go.

“It’s okay... Hatsuhiko said my power was strong... My Two Twool Two... Two Tool Tool... My power is still active,” said Haneko, giving up after the second strike. “That means I’ll be okay, for sure... And that liar will suffer for not keeping his promise... Hee hee... Hee hee hee!”

Preoccupied as she was by the danger she felt was imminent, Haneko’s faith in her power was all she had to rely on. Two Tool to Too True, the power to make a promise binding, had served her well. She’d used it time and time again to drive her enemies into a corner, always under Habikino Hatsuhiko’s orders, and in doing so, she had contributed greatly to Hearts’s cause.

No Player could stand up to their own hyperenlarged sense of guilt, no matter how powerful they were. Some caved under the pressure, choosing to make good on their ill-advised promise. Others voluntarily resigned from the Spirit War, just to escape their guilt. Those who chose neither of those paths and instead struggled on did so to their last breaths, inevitably being crushed by their guilt when all was said and done.

The ability to manifest one’s guilt as a distinct personality made Haneko’s power a rather rare one, by the War’s standards. Its combat potential simply didn’t compare to her fellow Players’ powers, and its strength was in an entirely different dimension. Forcing the creation of an alternate personality within one’s mind was as tricky as a power’s effect could be, and Haneko was convinced that no one would have the capacity to cope with it.

“Hee... Hee hee... It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I’m special, after all...”

Haneko’s irregular power and the victories it had won her served as a tranquilizer, soothing the terror that beset her. Her blind faith, however, also blinded her to the truth. In trusting her power so thoroughly, she’d let her perspective narrow to a dangerous degree. If she’d stopped to really think it through, she would’ve eventually realized the obvious: if she could have a power of that nature, other Players could too. In fact, it was practically a guarantee.

Suddenly, Haneko jumped as a knock rang out from her door. She fearfully tiptoed toward it, sheets still draped over her head, and glanced through the peephole.

“O-Oh... It’s just Hanji,” Haneko sighed with relief. Haimura Hanji—a young man with a perpetual squint and a toned physique—was the member of Hearts who’d been assigned to watch over her. Haneko quickly undid the chain and opened the door up, ushering him inside. “It’s good to see you, Hanji... And really, thank you so much for wasting your time on me like this. So, umm...did something hap—”

The moment Haneko gave Hanji a subservient bow—before she’d even finished her sentence—Hanji’s thick muscular arm shot forward. Before she knew what was happening, he’d grabbed Haneko’s neck in a strong one-handed hold.

“Ghaugh! Agh, ahhh!” Haneko gasped, her eyes wide with shock and intense confusion. “H-Hanji... Why...?”

Is this a joke? A betrayal? Did I offend someone without even realizing it again? Haneko’s mind raced as she tried to figure out what was going on...but Hanji just laughed.

“Hya ha ha ha haaa! Hyaaa ha ha ha!” the muscle-bound man cackled. The way he laughed was as vulgar and ill-refined as a laugh could be. “Hya ha ha ha! I was wondering what you’d look like, and god damn, if you aren’t the dullest little drip I’ve ever seen! Dull face, dull clothes—even your vibe’s dull as dirt! How boring can you be? And this room, god, it’s so dark! Seriously, what are you even doing? You’re wasting your one chance to shack up in a luxury suite like this! Open up those damn curtains, girl! If you get to stay in a place like this, the first thing you do should be to throw ’em wide open in the middle of the day and prance around the place in the buff! You’ve gotta enjoy the freedom, not to mention the sexy, sexy danger of it all! Hyaaa ha ha ha ha!”

Hanji’s voice came out shrill and grating, like the cawing of a crow, and something about his verbal mannerisms came across as distinctly feminine. Haneko was more confused than ever. Hanji had always been a man of few words who’d spend most of his free time lifting weights. He certainly wasn’t the sort of person to go off on a hyper, blathering ramble like this—and that’s not even starting on how out of place his effeminate tone of voice was.

“Hanji...a-are you...training to be a drag queen...?”

“Dead wrong, dipshit,” Hanji spat scornfully, then he released his grip on Haneko’s neck. She fell to her knees, coughing and sputtering for breath as he laughed once more.

“You know what I am, though? I’m Yusano Grotesqua, that’s what!”

“...Huh?”

“Hya ha ha ha ha!’ You still don’t get it? Kinda slow on the uptake, aren’tcha? What I’m saying’s that your macho man here’s personality has been upstaged by li’l ol’ me!”

Haneko gaped in disbelief. It was a preposterous, outright unbelievable claim, and yet some part of her was immediately able to understand it. Haneko’s power functioned in much the same way, so it wasn’t all that difficult for her to accept.

“Y-You mean...you used your power to...?”

“Biiingo!” said Hanji—or rather, Grotesqua, the mouth of the man she’d possessed twisting into a big, vulgar grin. “We’ve got, y’know, one of those multiple personality thingamajigs going on, right? One body, buncha different people inside? And the thing is, we can take those personalities and put ’em in other people whenever we want! Hya ha ha! Feels just a liiittle like your power, don’t it?! It’s like, wow, we’re real turds of a feather, huh?!”

“E-Eeek!” Haneko squealed. She was far too busy crawling away from Grotesqua in a blind panic to call out her uninspired wordplay.

Just as Haneko was about to make it out into the hallway, a familiar individual came into her view: Hasegawa Hazuki. Hazuki was an athletic woman with a firmly toned build, a distinct tan, and a rather short haircut. She was wearing a tracksuit, which reinforced her sporty image—an image that was entirely accurate, given that she was a former decathlete. She had that keen atmosphere about her that professional athletes tended to develop, and she was the other member of Hearts who’d been tasked with serving as Haneko’s guard.

“Hazuki! W-W-We’re in trouble! An enemy’s used their power on Hanji, and he’s—” Haneko began, practically begging Hazuki to save her...but to no avail.

“I apologize for the confusion, but I’m afraid I must offer a correction: I am not Hasegawa Hazuki,” Hazuki said in a tone entirely unlike her own. She usually spoke in a gruff, almost mannish manner, but now her word choice was as polite and courteous as could be. “My name is Yusano Mysteria, and I’ve supplanted this individual’s personality,” she explained as she pressed a fingertip into the side of her face, just beside her eye—almost as if she were adjusting an invisible pair of glasses.

“Oh, yes—this individual isn’t wearing glasses,” observed Hazuki—or rather, Mysteria—as she reached toward Haneko, who was still frozen with shock. After offering a courteous “Pardon me,” Mysteria proceeded to pluck the glasses right off the bridge of Haneko’s nose, popped the lenses out like it was the most natural thing in the world to do, then put on the lensless frames.

“Hmm. These aren’t flattering by any means, but I suppose they’ll do well enough. Better than nothing, in any case,” Mysteria muttered as she adjusted her new glasses. The fact that she had no qualms about complaining about the item she’d just stolen was a clear sign that while her tone was cordial, her behavior was anything but.

“Oooh? What’re you here for, Mysteria? I could’ve sworn I told you that li’l ol’ Grotesqua the Ultra Invincible had things totally covered? Think you could not turn this into a surprise threesome, thanks?”

“Leaving the job to someone as crude as you was making me anxious.”

“Hya ha ha! You’re so full of it, girl! Be honest—you’re doing it for your darling li’l Akutagawa, aren’tcha? I know you just looove that kid to bits, after all!”

An instant change came over Mysteria. She had seemed like a calm, collected intellectual right up to the moment Grotesqua had decided to poke fun at her, at which point she grew very conspicuously shaken.

“Wh-Wh-What on earth are you talking about?! F-For your information, I have no feelings of any such nature for that boy whatsoever!” Mysteria babbled at a breakneck pace as she readjusted her glasses.

Grotesqua smirked and let out her loudest laugh yet. “Well, I can’t stand the little shit,” she said. “He’s a cocky, saucy asshat, is what he is.”

“You can’t possibly be serious! He’s adorable, for one thing, and his cocky, condescending attitude is just... Oh, it’s perfect! Ahh... If only he’d turn his icy glare toward me... Gah! U-Umm... Well, as I said, I don’t have any particularly noteworthy feelings for him. I just think he’s ever so slightly endearing, that’s all.”

“You’d seriously go for a kid who looks like he hasn’t even grown his first pube?”

“The moment those start to grow is precisely the moment men stop being worth your time! Ah. Uh, no, I mean...”

“Ugh, Mysteria, gross to the max! You belong on a list, girl! Keep those feelings repressed where they belong! Seriously, I’m starting to think you might be even more of a freak than I am! Hya ha ha!”

“Heh... Heh heh heh! Well, I’m just pleased to see you haven’t lost any of your usual pep, Grotesqua— Oh, excuse me. I meant Nurse Piss.”

Grotesqua let out a strangled gasp. “O-Oh, you did not just go there, bitch! Say that again, I dare you!”

“Nurse Piss. A nickname well suited for the woman who was so scared by Kiryuu Hajime’s bluff she wet herself.”

“Did not! That was Fantasia, not me! I’ve told you a billion times that we’d already swapped out by that point!”

“And Fantasia insists the opposite. I don’t think I need to bother saying which of you I’m more inclined to take at her word. Surely you recall the conclusion we reached at our meeting the other day? ‘Grotesqua wet herself after being intimidated by Kiryuu Hajime, then swapped Fantasia in moments later in an effort to foist the blame of the accident onto her.’”

“Wha— No I— I didn’t! Seriously, I didn’t, I friggin’ didn’t!”

Grotesqua and Mysteria’s shouting match continued to devolve—though of course, anyone observing them would have seen Haimura Hanji and Hasegawa Hazuki carrying out the argument instead. The spectacle was so surreal that Haneko found herself petrified, just watching them in a dumbfounded daze. It was like her soul had departed her body.

What’s going on...? What even...? she thought vacantly, half convinced that this was all just a nightmare. The two guards who were supposed to be protecting her had turned into entirely different people. That’s not to say they’d been impersonated—rather, they were still themselves, just being controlled by total strangers. They were completely out of character, in a very unusual sense of the phrase.

“Oh, how careless of me. This is no time for me to be arguing with a strumpet. Finishing her off comes before anything else,” said Mysteria, bringing the dispute to an abrupt close as she turned her glare toward Haneko.

“Hya ha ha! Riiight, good point. Gotta take care of her for your cute widdle Akutagawa’s sake, eh?” commented Grotesqua.

“A-As I’ve said, I have no particular feelings for him whatsoever... I just don’t like leaving a job unfinished for long.”

“Can’t argue with that—I wanna wrap this up nice and quick too. Just finding this basic-ass bitch was a pain, and I wanna be done with her ASAP. I can’t even remember how many Hearts members I had to go through to figure out where she was!”

That comment finally clued Haneko in to how her whereabouts had been compromised. If they can take over people’s bodies, and there are a bunch of them working together...then finding me would be a snap for them, she realized.

Hatsuhiko had done everything he could to hide her, but preventing information leaks entirely was simply impossible when you were dealing with someone who could claim the identity of your allies at the drop of a hat. All they would have to do was take over one of your people, assume their role in the organization, and proceed to snap up all the info that was available to them—and that was assuming that they couldn’t read their victim’s memories upon possession, in which case they wouldn’t even have to go through the trouble. If anything, the fact that Grotesqua had described finding Haneko as “a pain” was an incredible compliment toward Hatsuhiko’s ability to obfuscate sensitive information, considering just how capable Grotesqua seemed to be.

That’s not fair... That’s not fair at all! thought Haneko, her expression twisting into a grief-stricken grimace. Her ability’s like mine, but more amazing in every single way... It makes mine totally obsolete in comparison!

Haneko had thought she was different. She’d thought she was unique. Her power was the one thing about herself that she saw as having merit—the one thing she could take a degree of pride in and feel superior toward others thanks to. It was her pillar of emotional support, and she cared about it so much that she’d spent ages racking her mind for a name that felt just right to give it. Now, however, that pillar of support seemed so terribly unstable it could crumble at any second.

“So, how’re we gonna do this, Mysteria? How ’bout I let you do the deed and claim the credit this time around? Use that nasty power of yours to kill the crap outta her, and your precious little Akutagawa might even give you a thank-you smooch!”

“Wh-What?! I’d never dare to presume... B-But, y-yes, if you insist! I must agree, finishing her with my power would probably be for the best. Yours is a little too flashy for this venue, most likely.”

Once again, her foes’ conversation plunged Haneko into still deeper depths of despair. Her personalities all have their own individual powers? she realized, horrified to find that her power didn’t even come close to standing on the same level as her foe’s. Her ability to implant alternate personalities into her opponents’ minds didn’t have any direct combat capabilities whatsoever—theirs was in an entirely different dimension compared to hers.

“Hee... Hee hee... Hee hee...”

At that point, all Haneko could do was laugh. She didn’t know what name to call the fragmented girl who stood in multiple forms before her, but one way or another, that girl had torn the idea that Haneko was special—the idea she’d been clinging to so desperately—to shreds.

“Oh, whoopsies! Did we already break her? Hya ha, that’s hilarious! Could she be any more of a chump?! Eh, might as well take the chance to mess with her a little before—” Grotesqua began...but then, in a split second, her leering smile vanished. She spun about on the spot, and Mysteria did likewise, ignoring Haneko’s slumped form entirely as they looked to the door.

“Hya ha ha... Well, this is rare! Not every day you come out to play,” said Grotesqua.

“Indeed,” Mysteria agreed. “In fact, I’m not even certain how long it’s been since the last time.”

The two of them watched intently as a girl walked into the room. Her hair was a dazzling shade of golden blonde, and her eyes were a vivid blue. She was wearing an eye-catchingly pink nurse’s uniform, and she had the jacket from an also-pink tracksuit draped over her shoulders. Her features still betrayed distinct traces of her youth, but her expression could only be described as an archaic smile. It was a blank smile that carried no emotion—a gentle curve of the lips that resembled a smile more than it embodied one.


“I assume that your presence here means what I think it means?” asked Mysteria.

“Hya ha ha! Can’t say I think Lil Miss Boring here’s worth it, if you ask me,” commented Grotesqua.

And then, without any further preamble, Mysteria and Grotesqua just...vanished. One moment they were there, and the next—without a trace of protest or resistance, as if it was perfectly natural—they were gone. The unconscious bodies of Hazuki and Hanji slumped to the carpeted floor, and the woman in the nurse uniform strolled past them without sparing them a glance, smiling like a broken puppet as she crouched down beside Haneko and gently brushed her cheeks with her fingertips.

“It’s a shame,” said the girl with the archaic smile. Her voice itself sounded perfectly unremarkable for a middle-school-aged girl, but something about its tone carried a profound, mystical air. “We’ve met as enemies, which means I’m going to have to kill you. Before I do, however...would you care to speak with me for a moment? I would like to impart meaning to this meeting of ours. I would speak with you, connect with you, and learn of you as a person—and, in doing so, bring another mind into being within me.”

Without changing her tone or turning away, the girl spoke on—but it seemed clear she was speaking to herself now rather than Haneko.

“This War nears its climax...and the time has come for me to make my move. If I am to bring to light all that has been consigned to oblivion, then my only choice is to bring the War to a close,” the girl said, still wearing that hollow smile.

Her name was Yusano Genre. All the individuals, all the characters that dwelled within her—Fantasia, Grotesqua, Mysteria, and many others—were mere aspects of her, the core personality.

The jagged edge of a chipped and pitted knife tore through the air in a sweeping horizontal slash that Habikino Hatsuhiko just barely managed to backstep away from at the last second. The blade had only scratched him—far from a lethal wound, despite the blood trickling down his chest. Or at least, the wound wasn’t lethal, not until Shuugo invoked his power.

Zigzag Jigsaw came into effect, and the fragment of metal that had been left in Hatsuhiko’s body sprang to life, burrowing its way into his blood vessels. It reached his heart in moments, then went on a savage rampage, tearing his most vital of organs to shreds—the lethal consequence of merely being grazed by Shuugo’s attacks. Hatsuhiko let out a pained groan as he collapsed to the floor, then vanished into thin air. That particular duplicate had exceeded its damage threshold.

“That makes sixty,” Shuugo muttered to himself with a scornful chuckle. He was on the sixth floor of Hatsuhiko’s high-rise, and paused for a moment to scratch “60” into a nearby wall with his knife.

No sooner had he finished than one of the three Habikino Hatsuhikos still standing in front of him shook his head. “I know that knife of yours is already a wreck, but you really should try to take better care of it anyway,” he sighed.

“I gotta write my kill count down somehow. Otherwise I’ll forget how many of you bugs I’ve squished so far,” Shuugo shot back. His attitude was as inflammatory as ever, but he was panting conspicuously as well. That was no surprise, really—he’d just fought sixty people in a row.

“In any case, I’m astonished,” said one of the Hatsuhikos. “I thought you were an idiot when you charged in here on your own, but lo and behold, you’ve actually managed to make it past the halfway point. It’d be one thing if you had a long-ranged power suited to taking on groups, like Happa’s, but you’ve been fighting—and winning—almost exclusively in hand-to-hand combat. I’m genuinely impressed by your strength and fortitude, I have to say. However...it’s not hard to tell that fatigue is taking its toll on you.”

“Shaddup. I’m just getting warmed up,” Shuugo spat, then dashed forward, closing in on the three Hatsuhikos in the blink of an eye.

It seemed that Hatsuhiko had undergone some basic martial arts training, and the copies made an effort to resist, but their capabilities paled in comparison to Shuugo’s brute strength and combat instincts. He ran one copy through with his knife, sent another crashing down the nearby staircase to the floor below with a well-aimed shoulder throw, then skimmed the third with his knife once more, dealing the finishing blow by way of his power. All three copies vanished moments later.

“That makes sixty-three,” Shuugo muttered as he caught his breath, then carved the new number into the wall.

According to the information Natsu Aki had obtained with her power, the maximum number of clones that One Hundred and One Wolfies could create was one hundred and twenty-five. Counting the original, that meant that Shuugo had one hundred and twenty-six Habikino Hatsuhikos in total to deal with, meaning that he’d just passed the halfway mark in a literal sense.

That wasn’t all that Aki had told him, of course. “I guess the most important takeaway’s that the number of copies he can make’s, like, inversely proportional to how far away he is? So if there’s only one or two of him, they can operate from a couple dozen kilometers away, no sweat, but if he brings out all hundred and twenty-five, that means they have to be within a radius of two hundred meters from him, maximum.”

From that piece of information, along with the fact that Hatsuhiko had been able to send forth so many copies of himself presently, Shuugo could extrapolate that the original was definitely close at hand. After all, when Shuugo had first stormed into the otherwise abandoned high-rise, dozens of Hatsuhikos had appeared to attack en masse, all at once. There was no doubt left that the real Hatsuhiko was somewhere in the building, and that knowledge was all Shuugo needed to keep himself fighting to the end.

“Graaaah!” Shuugo roared as he charged up toward the next floor. Four Hatsuhikos leaped out in front of him, weapons at the ready, but Shuugo dealt with them in the blink of an eye through keen knife work and overwhelming brawling ability.

Even if tens or hundreds of foes came at Shuugo at once, there were only so many who could actually engage in close combat with him at a time. That fact was his saving grace. A horde of Hatsuhikos was ready to bar his path, but he dealt with them a handful at a time, soon cutting down his seventieth challenger, followed shortly by his eightieth. His movements grew duller as his stamina depleted, however, and he’d taken a number of scrapes and flesh wounds over the course of the drawn-out battle...but lessened or not, his strength was still overwhelming.

By the time Shuugo reached the ninetieth Hatsuhiko, he was a worn-out mess—and ten foes after that...

“Congratulations! You’ve found the real me.”

...the hundred and first Hatsuhiko appeared, shamelessly declaring itself to be the real deal. Shuugo cut it down without so much as pausing, and that self-proclaimed original, of course, disappeared like all the other copies.

Now, Shuugo paused to catch his breath. “That makes...a hundred ’n’ one,” he said to himself. He had reached the building’s tenth floor, which was largely occupied by a banquet hall. A massive window took up one of the room’s walls, offering an unimpeded view of the surrounding cityscape. Shuugo leaned on the room’s doorway, covered in wounds and gasping for breath, then staggered over to a nearby wall and carved “101” into it with his knife.

“Man...really makes you think,” Shuugo muttered between gasps. “There’s that one game series where Warring States-era generals or whatever beat down mountains of random trash soldiers, and it’s supposed to be all fun and exhilarating and shit...but it turns out taking down an army of small fry in real life’s just a goddamn drag. I sure as hell don’t feel exhilarated, anyway.”

“Well, that was a letdown. I went out of my way to tell Akutagawa my power’s name in the hopes it would make you assume my hundred and first copy was the final one, but I suppose that was a waste of effort. It would’ve been so funny too,” said yet another Hatsuhiko, who appeared out of nowhere toward the far end of the banquet hall.

“What sorta dumbass would fall for a stupid trap like that?” growled Shuugo.

“Ha ha ha! It was rather stupid, I’ll admit, but you’d be surprised by how many people get taken in by that sort of thing. My understanding is that giving your power a deceptive name is something of a taboo relative to battle manga standards,” said Hatsuhiko. He seemed remarkably calm and composed for a man who’d already had a hundred of his duplicates get defeated. “To be completely honest, my actual maximum number of copies is one hundred and twenty-five. In other words, there are twenty-four more of me somewhere in this building, counting the original.”

“Twenty-four, huh?” Shuugo muttered. He knew from Aki’s report that Hatsuhiko was telling the truth this time, and he took a deep breath before raising his knife and assuming a fighting stance. “Yeah, I can handle that. Looks like my playthrough of this shitty-ass Samurai Warriors knockoff is finally gonna be over soon.”

Shuugo could taste his imminent victory, and a spark of vitality returned to his eyes...but it didn’t last for long.

“Heh... Heh heh... Ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Before Shuugo could make his move, the Hatsuhiko clone in front of him burst out in a fit of cackling, irrepressible laughter. Shuugo furrowed his brow in confusion, but Hatsuhiko just kept laughing. You’d think he’d just heard the funniest joke he’d ever been told.

“Ha ha ha ha ha, haaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ahh... I can’t... I just couldn’t hold it in. I was planning on dragging this out at least a little longer before dropping the big twist, but...I just couldn’t stop myself from cracking up! It’s just so comical, I can’t take it...”

“The hell’re you talking about?”

“You see, Toki Shuugo,” said Hatsuhiko, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes from the sheer force of his laughing fit, “you’ve been confronting my power head-on with the purest and simplest of tactics imaginable. I fielded an army, attempting to overwhelm you with sheer numbers, and you broke through with nothing more than a single knife to your name. Your ability to bring down a hundred men single-handedly is truly something to admire...but I’m sorry to inform you that it was all completely pointless.”

Shuugo paused, scowled...then noticed that something was wrong. The two of them, he realized, were not alone. His eyes were still locked on the Hatsuhiko before him, but he realized he could hear footsteps, breathing, clothes rustling—clear and undeniable traces of an incredible number of people who had not been in the room moments before, but were certainly there now.

“Wha—?!” Shuugo gasped as his mind caught up with reality.

Before he even realized what was happening, he had been surrounded by Hatsuhiko clones. In fact, “surrounded” failed to do the scale of the scene justice. It would be more accurate to say that the area around him had been inundated with Hatsuhikos. The banquet hall was so packed with identical copies of the same suit-clad man that they spilled out into the elevator, the escalator, and even the fire escape. This wasn’t in the realm of ten or a few dozen copies. Even at just a glance, Shuugo could tell there were over a hundred of them.

“What the hell...? I thought you only had twenty-four left,” said Shuugo.

“Isn’t it obvious? I brought them back,” said Hatsuhiko, sounding thoroughly amused by Shuugo’s bewilderment. “I wasn’t lying when I told you my limit, for the record. I’m genuinely only capable of bringing out one hundred and twenty-five copies of myself, and once they take a certain amount of damage, they disappear...but I never said that I couldn’t just make them again right after, did I?”

Shuugo drew in a sharp breath, and Hatsuhiko grinned.

“No, I didn’t—you just assumed that if you defeated all of my copies, everything would work out, as if it were a matter of course. In truth, though, I can revive my copies whenever I wish. So long as the real me is safe, I can always have one hundred and twenty-five of me ready and fighting fit.”

“...”

“Heh heh, ha ha ha ha ha ha! You were fighting so heroically I couldn’t stop myself from playing along, but it was all perfectly pointless from the start,” said Hatsuhiko with a scornful smile packed full of perfectly genuine contempt.

Shuugo stood there stock-still. He’d put his life on the line, fighting and defeating a hundred men in sequence, only for all of them to be brought back anew. It was like battling the final boss in an RPG down to the last sliver of its health bar only for it to pull some technique from out of nowhere that healed it back up to full. All of Shuugo’s efforts, all of his resolve, had been rendered meaningless.

“God dammit!” Shuugo shouted as he lunged for the Hatsuhiko before him—but before he could make contact, one of the other Hatsuhikos to his side brought a police baton down on his arm. The attack came from Shuugo’s blind spot, and he was unable to pull back in time. The baton scored a clean hit on his forearm, with an impact great enough to make him drop his jackknife.

“Ugh!” Shuugo grunted.

“You’re slowing down,” said Hatsuhiko, moments before every one of him descended upon Shuugo like a human avalanche, tackling their prey in unison.

Shuugo managed to beat back a number of the Hatsuhikos with his fists alone, but he was as outnumbered as he’d ever been, and before long, his foes had overpowered and immobilized him. Soon enough, he had Hatsuhikos holding on to each of his limbs, keeping him standing up like a prisoner awaiting a crucifixion.

“Without this knife, you’re powerless,” Hatsuhiko said as he scooped Shuugo’s jackknife up off the ground. “The power to leave a fragment of metal in your enemy’s body, transforming a scratch into a fatal wound... It’s hardly the most frightening power in terms of scale, but in single combat, it really is quite terrifying,” he droned in a haughty, condescending tone as he strolled up to Shuugo, then drove his fist into his captive’s gut without hesitation.

Shuugo let out a spluttering gasp as pain shot through his torso. The other Hatsuhikos were still holding him upright, so he couldn’t even crumple over in agony.

“Phew! Now those are some impressive abs! I think that hurt my fist almost as much as it hurt you! Goes to show that if you want to hurt someone, you really ought to use a weapon,” Hatsuhiko declared, flapping his wrist like his hand was still smarting. Meanwhile, a cluster of other Hatsuhikos carrying batons, stun guns, and the like began to approach. “Killing you would be easy, but it’d also be a waste. This seems like the perfect chance to practice a few torture techniques. I always have my people take care of this sort of work for me, but you never know—maybe a time will come when I’m forced by circumstance to handle it myself. Hmm...how to start? Maybe I’ll use this knife of yours to peel your fingernails off, one by one. How does that sound?”

Shuugo didn’t say a word.

“Toki Shuugo,” said Hatsuhiko, the constructed smile vanishing from his face and leaving behind a severe frown as he brandished the knife. “I’m going to give you one last chance. Will you join me? Our numbers have considerably diminished, and I have you to blame for that. I’ll need to replenish my stock of capable fighters if I want to breeze through the rest of the War, and you’re a prime candidate.”

It seemed that to Hatsuhiko, gaining and losing allies was purely transactional. He felt no resistance to bringing people aboard or letting them go, and in fact, it seemed very likely that Hearts only existed as an organization thanks to what effectively amounted to him buying one ally after another. In his eyes, that’s all allies were: assets to be bought, sold, and disposed of. So long as he stood at the head of his organization, he couldn’t have cared less who was doing his dirty work.

“Akutagawa was one thing... I just couldn’t stomach that condescending, impertinent little brat’s attitude on a physiological level. You, however, I would welcome with open arms. I’m certain we could do great things together,” said Hatsuhiko. His words were so perfectly flimsy and weightless, it wasn’t even worth considering the possibility that he truly meant them. “Oh, and by the way—my conditions for you joining my organization haven’t changed. If you carry out the task I ask of you, I give you my word that I’ll pay you six million yen as a reward and formally welcome you into Hearts. All you have to do...is kill Kiryuu Hajime.”

It really was the exact same offer he’d proposed when he and Shuugo had first met. That being said, while the offer was the same, the circumstances in which it was being made were drastically different. This time, Shuugo had been robbed of his weapon, immobilized, and was faced with a one-versus-one-hundred battle even if he managed to overcome the former two obstacles. This wasn’t so much a solicitation as it was outright coercion. If Shuugo refused, he would almost certainly be killed—or perhaps worse. The situation could hardly have looked more grim...

“Heh... Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

...and yet, Shuugo laughed. He let out a sneering, bellowing laugh, as if to mock Hatsuhiko from the bottom of his heart.

“What’s so funny?” aske Hatsuhiko.

“You’re just so damn desperate, that’s all,” Shuugo said with a grin. “You’re obsessed with our boss, you know that? Just how desperate are you to watch Kiryuu Hajime get betrayed by his allies and fall into despair?”

This time, it was Hatsuhiko’s turn to clam up.

“I did some research on you, y’know?” Shuugo continued. “Seems you’re a pretty famous guy. The young, handsome prodigy making waves in the business world, or whatever. You’ve been making a killing out there, huh? Heard you’ve got a Harley and a Lamborghini and shit—always wanted to drive one of those, myself. I’m actually jealous. You’re one hell of a success story...but that just makes it weirder. Why’s a guy who everyone and their mother’s jealous of so damn fixated on a single unemployed dumbass? How am I supposed to not laugh about that? Heh heh, ha ha ha ha— Ugh!”

Shuugo’s laughter was cut off as one of the Hatsuhikos slammed its fist into the side of his face.

“Shut up,” said Hatsuhiko, his tone low and unnaturally muted. The casual smile he’d had his clones preserve throughout the encounter had vanished. Now, they looked furious. Well over a hundred enraged glares pierced through Shuugo from all sides while the Hatsuhiko in front of him reached out, grabbed him by the neck, and squeezed.

“Agh...”

“Yes...that’s correct. You’re right in every way. I really am...fixated on Kiryuu Hajime. I joined this pointless excuse of a War just for him. I knew how seriously he was taking it, so I decided to use it as an opportunity to thoroughly crush him. By the time I’m finished, he’ll be kneeling before me, begging me for mercy. That’s the only way I’ll be satisfied,” said Hatsuhiko. His voice was beginning to tremble with rage. “That man...laughed at me! With one look, he saw through me—he looked down at me—and he laughed. I control money, I control people, and everything around me is mine to do what I want with...yet he called me a slave to money!”

Hatsuhiko’s whole persona—the smiling, pleasant, and personable facade he normally put on—had vanished. It was like he’d peeled off a mask, laying bare his true self, a man full of pride and self-important vanity.

“Ever since then...ever since the day he laughed at me...I’ve never felt satisfied. That mocking laughter made it seem like everything I’ve done and everything I am were sheer folly, and it’s been echoing in my mind ever since. No matter how much money I made, no matter how much I achieved, it was always still there!” he rambled, his eyes terribly bloodshot as he exposed the deepest workings of his inner self. His uncontrollable rage and boundless ego were dominating him, driving him to the brink of madness. “‘A slave to money’? Like hell I am! What about me looks like a slave?! I’m the one who uses people! I’m one of the precious few who exploits and dominates this world for all it’s worth! Money, people, everything—I use them all!”

“Heh... Bullshit,” spat Shuugo. Hatsuhiko’s viselike grip on his neck did nothing to stop him from being as openly defiant as ever. “So, what, one little stain on your record makes you completely lose it? You’ve got one hell of a fragile ego, Mister Elite.”

Hatsuhiko froze...then let Shuugo go. A moment later, he raised Shuugo’s own knife, holding it in front of Shuugo’s eye.

“I’ve had enough of this. You’ve made it very clear that you have no interest in obeying me, so all that’s left is for me to make good on my word and get to the torturing,” Hatsuhiko said as he brought the knife closer and closer to Shuugo’s eye. “I’ll be keeping you alive, for the time being. This is the Spirit War, after all, and killing you would just send you back to your ordinary life. I’m going to take my time and make you truly regret defying me—and needless to say, I won’t be letting you drop out by your own will until I’m satisfied.”

At that, one of the other Hatsuhikos stepped forward with a leather gag in his hands.

“I imagine you’re already aware, but dropping out of the War requires you to state your intention to retire out loud. The spirits won’t accept anything less. In other words, if you can’t talk, you have nowhere to run. Now then, Shuugo—be a good torture dummy, if you’d please.”

Hatsuhiko copies carrying all sorts of weapons and tools closed in on Shuugo. Just before the one with the gag sealed off his ability to drop out of the War, though, Shuugo managed to say one last thing.

“Great... It’s finally over,” he muttered, then he let out a long, heavy sigh. Oddly enough, it seemed like a fulfilled sigh—as if he’d just accomplished something major.

“It’s over...?” Hatsuhiko repeated quizzically.

“Yeah. It’s all over now.”

“Hmph. You seem rather unconcerned, all things considered. Is keeping up a calm front in the face of a truly pathetic defeat your way of preserving your pride, perhaps?”

“Oh don’t get me wrong. I didn’t lose. It’s not over for me,” said Shuugo with a dauntless grin. “You’re the one who’s finished.”

Hatsuhiko furrowed his brow...and in the next instant, a crack rang out and the entire floor shuddered intensely.

“What the—?! Wh-What’s going on...? An earthquake?!” Hatsuhiko shouted.

The shudders came once more, and the whole floor felt like it was swaying violently. It wasn’t an earthquake, though—the rumbling sensation was too irregular for that, and more importantly, too intense. Hatsuhiko’s high-rise had been built to be incredibly earthquake-resistant, and a typical quake could never have shaken it to this extent.

Hatsuhikos all throughout the room began to lose their balance and collapse to the floor. The shuddering wasn’t abating—in fact, it was growing more and more violent, a chorus of rampant destruction beginning to echo throughout the chamber.

“Wh-What the hell is happening?!” one of the Hatsuhikos muttered before turning to glare at Shuugo. Enough of the Hatsuhikos who had been holding him in place had fallen to the ground that he could easily shake the rest free...and a spiteful, sardonic grin spread across his face.

“You... What did you do?!” Hatsuhiko shouted.

“Zigzag Jigsaw,” said Shuugo. For once, he sounded almost proud to declare the name his organization’s leader had given his power. “You’ve seen it enough to get how it works—I leave a piece of my knife in whoever I cut, and that piece travels to their core and destroys them. In other words, when I cut a person—no matter where the cut is—the fragment I leave in them will tear their heart to shreds.”

And so, a flesh wound would become fatal. The tiniest of injuries ended in the victim being torn apart from the very core of their being.

“But, y’know...I never said I could only use it on people, did I?”

Hatsuhiko gaped at Shuugo, his eyes widening in sudden realization. “Y-You’re not saying...you couldn’t! The whole building—”

“Yeah, you’ve got yourself a big-ass place here. Took a lot of time, and a lot of effort.”

Shuugo had known from the very start that defeating all of Hatsuhiko’s duplicates was pointless. His desperate battle against them had been for the sake of buying time, and whenever he’d had the opportunity, he’d paused to carve a number into the walls...each time leaving a fragment of his knife behind in the building itself. Those fragments had traveled through the structure’s interior, seeking out the structural supports that served as its core, and carved them to pieces.

A tremendous crash rang out, and the massive wall-sized window shattered. Countless cracks spiderwebbed their way across the walls and floor.

“There’s no way to tell the difference between your copies and the real you, and I doubt you’d ever show your real self to us to begin with...so I decided, fuck it, might as well just bring the whole place down with you in it,” said Shuugo.

Over a hundred Hatsuhiko duplicates’ faces spasmed with fear and astonishment. “So then...you’re planning on a murder-suicide? You’ll sacrifice yourself to bring me down with you?” said one of them.

“Hah! Dunno about that,” said Shuugo. “You’d be surprised how good my luck can be when the chips are down. Who knows if a collapsing building’s enough to kill me off for good?”

It was an all-or-nothing gambit that Shuugo had put his life on the line to pull off. The man who had spent so long fighting only when he was told to, abandoning all pretense of thought and choice, had taken the information that his allies had given him, racked his mind, worked out a plan, then steeled his resolve and chosen to go through with it by his own will and on his own terms.

“I don’t have what it takes to be a leader. I gave it some real thought, and I figured out that if I’m not gonna be a mercenary, then the best I can expect is to end up as a sacrificial pawn, a beaten-down loser, or something along those lines. And so,” said Shuugo, his voice carrying a note of self-deprecation along with a very clear sense of willpower, “I decided to throw my everything into a stupid-ass suicide rush and kick the shit outta you in style. I’m the assault leader of Fallen Black, and I’m sure as hell gonna act like it.”

“Why, you miserable— You’re just a tool! How dare you!” Hatsuhiko shouted. His face contorted with fury as he glared at Shuugo, and several of him charged forward, weapons held at the ready...but before they could reach him, the floor began to crumble away. A massive fissure-like crack opened up right in front of Shuugo, and some of the duplicates were unable to stop in time, plunging into the abyss.

The building’s collapse was accelerating rapidly. The chandelier fell from the ceiling, crushing over a dozen duplicates with its massive weight. In no time at all, the hundred-plus Hatsuhikos had been cut down to fewer than half their original number.

“No...” said one.

“G-G-Gaaaah!” wailed another.

“Dammit! God dammit!” shouted a third. One by one, they vanished into nothingness.

“Th-This isn’t happening... How...? If I lose here...then how will I ever bring Kiryuu Hajime to heel?” yet another Hatsuhiko muttered. “There’s no point. If I can’t make him submit through this War—through supernatural battles—then it’s all just pointless...”

In that moment—in the merest of instants before the building collapsed, with his life dangling by a thread—the words that spilled from Habikino Hatsuhiko’s mouth were once again driven by his obsessive fixation on Kiryuu Hajime. His resentful murmur, however, had no hope of drowning out the dreadful cacophony of devastation that still carried on around him. The vast majority of his duplicates had been obliterated, and at some point along the way, Toki Shuugo had vanished as well. In the end, only a single duplicate was left alone in the banquet hall.

“It’s over? Without me ever even seeing him face-to-face...? I’m going to be erased by his underling?” Hatsuhiko whispered. He had finally moved past anger and resentment. Now, his expression was one of exhaustion and grim acceptance of the tragedy he’d found himself in. “I may have brought this upon myself, but still...what a disappointing ending.”

The world collapsed around Hatsuhiko, crumbling to dust. The building he had bought to ensure he would never forget the grudge he held against Kiryuu Hajime, the ever-present embodiment of his rage and humiliation, was falling to pieces. The banquet hall was already all but unrecognizable, and as Hatsuhiko stared out across it, he saw the strangest thing—the illusory outline of a man with mismatched eyes and a long black coat, standing in the middle of the chamber. There he was, just like three years ago, laughing that awful laugh that Hatsuhiko would never—could never—forget.

“Please... Tell me, Kiryuu Hajime...where did I go wrong? What was it that made me a slave to money? Tell me, please.”

Those words, full of grief and sorrow, were the last Hatsuhiko spoke before the ceiling caved in, crushing his final duplicate. The whole building followed suit moments later, collapsing in upon itself with a thunderous roar and leaving nothing but a billowing cloud of dust in its place. The real Habikino Hatsuhiko, hidden away in a secret chamber so thoroughly obscured it wasn’t present on any of the building’s blueprints, was caught up in the collapse and perished. His death was quick, quiet, and observed by no one.

Shuugo opened his eyes to find a bright blue sky stretching out above him.

“Guess I survived, huh?” he muttered to himself as he sat up. He was completely surrounded by the wreckage of Hatsuhiko’s high-rise. It was a ghastly sight, to say the least—almost like the area had been caught up in a horrific natural disaster.

Shuugo took a moment to inspect himself. He still felt all the injuries and fatigue he’d sustained over the course of his battle, but that aside, nothing seemed to be conspicuously wrong with him. He’d been prepared to die to carry out his plan, but when all was said and done, it seemed he’d escaped more or less unharmed.

“Guess my luck might be even better than I gave myself credit for, huh?”

“...Luck had nothing to do with this.”

A listless voice rang out behind Shuugo, who turned to find Akutagawa Yanagi walking toward him, taking care to avoid the mountains of rubble in the area.

“I’m the only reason you’re still alive,” Yanagi added.

Shuugo glanced around again, now realizing that within a single space in the disaster zone of shattered concrete and twisted steel girders—a circular zone centered around him—all signs of devastation were absent. In fact, he was sitting upon a perfectly intact section of the building’s floor. It was like the rubble had gone out of its way to dodge him as it’d plummeted to the ground...or rather, like the space he occupied had slipped into a gap in the building’s collapse.

“All thanks to you, huh?” Shuugo grunted.

“If you’re grateful, then you might as well go with a more formal thank-you,” said Yanagi.

“Sorry, but I just got done having this whole conversation ’bout how you don’t have to say thanks to your teammates.”

“Talk about being a contrarian... But whatever, I guess. Not like your thanks would earn me a single yen.”

“Hah! Now that’s something—not gonna go on a screed about how we’re not teammates this time?”

Yanagi fell into silence. Meanwhile, Shuugo shoved himself to his feet and glanced around the area.

“So, did he bite it or what?” asked Shuugo.

“Yeah,” said Yanagi. “I found his body a ways over there, crushed by a steel beam. He disappeared right away, though, so he might already be alive again somewhere...”

“Nice. How’d things go on your end, while we’re at it?”

“I crushed Hachisuka Happa, then took out the rest of their combat-capable Players while I was at it. Fantasia’s other personalities dealt with Hamai Haneko as well, apparently... Thanks to that, the guy in my head’s gone for good.”

“Figure that means Fantasia’s not in your head anymore either?”

“Yeah... She already went back to her own body.”

“That girl’s power’s never made a goddamn lick of sense, I swear. Putting her other personalities in people’s bad enough, but sending the original out like that’s just nuts.”

“Fantasia’s not the original, apparently. She’s just the most sociable of them, so she takes control the most often... The core personality’s someone else. I still haven’t seen her, though.”

“Where’d you learn all this crap?”

“The intellectual personality with the glasses—Mysteria—told me about it all...no clue why, though. She pretty much always swaps in when Fantasia and I are alone in the hideout together.”

“She have a thing for you, or what?”

“I seriously doubt it. Mysteria’s mental age is twenty-four, apparently.”

Shuugo and Yanagi started making their way across the rubble pile as they chatted with each other. Although a whole high-rise had collapsed in on itself, there was no sign of police or firefighters moving in on the scene, nor did the people walking past the wreckage take any notice. The spirits who had been monitoring the battle had kept things nice and convenient—for themselves, that is—by keeping the whole affair under wraps. Just like all battles between Players, it had been concealed from the eyes of human society.

Before long the building itself would either return to its normal, undamaged state, or otherwise be made to have never existed in the first place. How exactly it was processed would depend on which spirit ended up taking on the task, but one way or another, the War was over for the faction that had occupied it. Hearts was no longer a functional organization. With Habikino Hatsuhiko—the man who had thrown his fortune into founding the faction—gone, it could no longer carry on. All of its prominent officers had been dispatched, and while some of its lower-ranking members likely remained in the War, they were very unlikely to take action with the source of their rewards no longer in the picture.

The battle that day had begun thanks to Toki Shuugo’s and Akutagawa Yanagi’s choices...and at that moment, it had finally drawn to a close.

“Guess it’s over, huh?”

“...It certainly is.”

“Wrong. This is where it all begins.”

It came out of nowhere. A line rang out that was perfectly incoherent, yet at the same time felt somehow profound—a line that one could only assume was intended exclusively to contradict the previous speaker—turning the conclusive air that the two young men had taken a moment to share on its head.

“Bwa ha ha!”

His silver hair glimmered in the sunlight. His color contacts gave his eyes a sharp, distinct contrast with each other. His black coat made you feel like you were boiling alive just looking at it. His round, slightly offset sunglasses served no perceivable purpose whatsoever.

“Hey there, Zigzag Jigsaw and Dead Space,” said Kiryuu Hajime, his jet-black coat trailing dramatically behind him—thanks almost certainly to his gravity manipulation, considering it was a perfectly windless day—as he strolled toward Shuugo and Yanagi. “You’ve been off on one hell of an adventure, haven’t you? Didn’t ask for my permission either.”

Kiryuu tossed the knife he was carrying—the one that Hatsuhiko had claimed during the battle in the high-rise—toward Shuugo. Tossing a bladed weapon to someone was an incredibly dangerous thing to do no matter how you sliced it, but Shuugo caught it with a casual ease, then glared at the man who’d thrown it.

“What’re you here for?” Shuugo grumbled.

“My subordinates were fighting for their lives! What sorta boss would I be if I didn’t make an appearance?” said Kiryuu.

An intense air of fatigue came over Shuugo and Yanagi. It was strange—nothing about what Kiryuu said had been wrong, per se, but hearing it from him was intensely irritating.

“But, anyway,” said Kiryuu, “you guys really went out and crushed an enemy organization for me, even though I never ordered it? Bwa ha ha! Looks like you’re finally starting to understand what it means to be my subordinate!”

The distaste on Shuugo’s and Yanagi’s faces slowly turned into something closer to a quiet, murderous rage. The battles they’d just been through had made both of them far, far too exhausted to put up with Kiryuu’s obnoxious persona.

Yanagi hadn’t been injured, at the very least, so he was able to suppress the impulse to just murder his stupid boss and be done with it for long enough to muster up a reply. “By the way,” he said, “you knew Hearts’s boss, didn’t you?”

“Nope. Never met the guy,” Kiryuu said indifferently. Yanagi’s and Shuugo’s eyes widened ever so slightly.

“You haven’t...? How does that work?” asked Yanagi.

“Why wouldn’t it work? I just don’t know the guy. I know that Hearts’s boss is some dude named Habikino Hatsuhiko, but that aside, no clue what his deal is.”

“Well...he certainly knew you,” said Yanagi. “Apparently, he met you sometime in the past and had a major grudge. He was obsessed.”

“Said something about you calling him ‘a slave to money,’” added Shuugo. “Guess he took it really personally. Guy had a hell of an axe to grind.”

Kiryuu crossed his arms and closed his eyes. For a few seconds he stood there, searching his memories.

“Oh...right, I remember now. Him,” Kiryuu finally said. “Yeah, right after I got into college I stopped by a club event, and he was the president of the club that organized it. Totally slipped my mind till just now, but when you put it that way, I’m pretty sure this was actually the building that party happened at.”

Kiryuu glanced upward at where the high-rise would have been, if it had still been standing. “It was one of those bougie-ass parties that elites throw, y’know? Good food, crazy awesome scenery...you’d have to be loaded to throw an event like that,” he explained in a plain, simple tone. “Anyway, I ended up hearing that this president guy was basically the same age as me, but he was some sorta genius when it came to making money...so I think I got kinda pissed, said some random bullshit, and went home, probably.”

Shuugo and Yanagi gaped.

“‘A slave to money’...? Did I actually say that...? I mostly just remember being focused on figuring out how to get away with smuggling food out. Got caught in the end, though.”

Kiryuu sounded perfectly disinterested in his own story, while Shuugo and Yanagi were speechless. It was very literally a jaw-dropping revelation. The two of them had caught a glimpse of Hatsuhiko’s obsessive drive for vengeance—despite his having had the sort of lifestyle that would make just about anyone jealous, he simply hadn’t been able to forget Kiryuu’s scornful laughter, reliving the humiliation of that night over and over again on a daily basis. And yet, the simple truth of the matter was that Kiryuu had only laughed at him because he was being a sore loser. “A slave to money,” the words Hatsuhiko had become so fixated on, certain as he was that they were a savage repudiation of his very way of life, had in truth been completely meaningless.

“Heh. Ha ha ha ha!”

“Hah... Ha ha ha!”

Before they knew it, Shuugo and Yanagi had both cracked up. The whole scenario was so purely absurd, they just couldn’t help it. Together, a boy with a perpetually irritated scowl and a boy with a perpetually gloomy frown clutched at their sides and laughed themselves to tears.

At the end of the day, Toki Shuugo and Akutagawa Yanagi hadn’t changed at all. The delinquent remained a delinquent, and the shut-in remained a shut-in. They were still in their teens, yes, but they’d also been around the block in their own sort of way. They’d each developed their own sense of values and their own outlook toward life, and it would take something truly extraordinary to convince either of them to change those perspectives.

Deep-seated habits just aren’t that easy to amend. The patterns of thought that made Shuugo into a directionless mercenary were deeply ingrained into his mind, and Yanagi was entirely unable to abandon his rationalistic manner of approaching life. They hadn’t changed, and the manner in which they approached the decisions they faced hadn’t changed either. People simply didn’t change that easily.

And yet...if a lack of meaning could be meaningful in and of itself—if a lack of a choice could be a decision in and of itself—then perhaps a lack of change could, in its own sort of way, be an instance of transformation and an indication of development.



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