XCEL

“So? Spill it.”

Back in the rooftop hovel, Rin sat up on the rafters and peered down at Tegata. On the way back, he’d taken every opportunity to use Framework which—much to his joy—actually came in useful. There was no regular entrance to the place, and breaking and entering the old man’s flat below wasn’t an option, and so Rin had taken to designing a rudimentary set of steps and ladders to help them ascend the side of the building.

“Spill it?”

Tegata had pulled out a rickety looking wooden chair from under a desk. The noise it made when he sat down was almost enough to make him think twice, but it mercifully decided to remain intact. Kinuka sat on her bed against the wall, her knees tucked up to her chest.

“Yeah.” Rin said, munching noisily on a solid block of instant ramen. “What you said about that stuff you needed to tell us.”

The rest of the snacks he’d bought from the convenience store lay scattered across the other bed. He was disappointed to learn, having already purchased five-thousand yen’s worth of what he deemed “essential supplies”, that Tegata didn’t have access to a kettle. Apparently “stealing one from a shop” didn’t pass as an acceptable suggestion, which Rin thought was weird. In any case, it seemed like dry ramen bricks would have to do. He was too hungry to bother complaining anymore.

“That’s right,” Tegata said. “I had to leave before I had a chance to explain everything to you both. You asked me how I know so much about JPRO as an organisation, didn’t you? About what they’re really like, I mean.”

Rin couldn’t remember whether he had or not, but nodded to save face.

“Well, here’s your answer.” Tegata turned around, unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the floor.

There was a collective intake of breath.

“What happened to you?!” Kinuka stifled a gasp, looking like she was about to be sick.

Running the length of Tegata’s back were some of the most gruesome scars Rin had ever seen. It was like he had been put through a sawmill and sewn back together with barbed wire. Tegata turned around, and his chest bore much of the same. Rin felt the blood drain from his face. This had far exceeded any kind of horror film he’d seen. This was real, after all.

“Sorry to scare you both,” Tegata said, putting his shirt back on. “I know they’re unsightly—”

“Tegata,” Kinuka cut across, “who did this to you?”

“The same people that kidnapped my father, I’ll bet,” Rin answered, gripping the beam tight enough he lost feeling in several fingers.

Tegata nodded. “I was one of JPRO’s first live test subjects. ‘Project Theia’; that’s what they called us. They targeted children. Childrens’ minds are more malleable, after all. They took us off the street and goodness knows where else, aiming to create a force of psychic slaves.”

He paused and looked between them. Not even Rin had anything clever to say.

“They performed the Excel ritual on us, just as you did yourselves, using the other half of the ascension blade. They tortured us, forced us to fight one another, to become stronger…”

He trailed off, looking down at the floor.

“Hey,” Kinuka rose tentatively to try and comfort him. “It’s alright,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything more if you don’t want to—”

Her hand moved to pat his shoulder, but Tegata seized her wrist. Startled, she backed off.

“Sorry!”

Looking up, his eyes were wide and frightened. Forcing himself to look back down at the floor, Tegata let go. “Don’t be. It’s my fault. You meant well.”

“I can’t imagine how awful that must’ve been,” said Kinuka.

Nor could Rin, it seemed. He had sat there, a blank stare interrupted by the occasional blink. You could almost see the words bouncing around his mind.

“I’ll never forgive them.”

Both turned to look at him.

“I’ll never forgive them,” he repeated, his voice strangely without emotion. “You want to destroy them, right?” Rin asked. “JPRO, that is.”

Tegata nodded. “I can’t undo any of the pain they’ve caused, not to me or anyone else. That would be asking for too much. But at least I want to stop them from hurting anyone else. My friends, they’re still trapped in those cells. I swore to rescue them. That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

“Figured as much.”

Hearing what Tegata and those other subjects had gone through, something white-hot had started to burn in his chest. If you’d ask him what he wanted, a thousand material items would come to mind, much like it would for any teenager. When it came down to it, however, Rin only wanted one thing.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” he said.

“What?”

“The world I want,” he continued, “is a world where this kind of shit doesn’t happen.”

As he’d grown up, the more he’d become aware of the world, and the awful happenings that seemed so commonplace, the less he’d wanted to interact with it. The world he’d come up with was so much better. Nothing terrible like that happened in the world he had taken so much care and effort into designing. Rin had since concluded that all the world’s problems: disease, war, famine, and everything in between, all hinged on bad design. If things were simply designed better, he thought, with a properly implemented structure, none of these faults would’ve happened. The thought of it made him sad, and not just the fact that it happened, either; the fact he couldn’t do anything about it was what bothered him most. He’d envisioned his perfect world for such a long time. Only now did he have the power to put his ideals into practice.

“I’ll help,” he said.

“You will?” Tegata looked relieved.

“Yeah, but not for your sake. I don’t care about you, or your friends—I’m doing this for my own sake,” Rin said. “These fuckers kidnapped my dad? On any other day, couldn’t care less. But when they decided to make it my problem? Send threats after my life? Or the one person I even remotely care about? That’s crossing the fucking line. They’re everything I despise about this corrupt world. Sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted, but that’s the answer you’re getting.”

“That’s fine,” said Tegata. “I don’t need your sympathy. All I can ask for is your help.”

He offered his hand.

Rin dropped down from the rafters and shook it. “And you’ve got it. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll rescue your friends, and we’re going to rescue my dad, but not for his sake, got it? I’m going to drag him out of that cell so I can finally get some answers out of the bastard, and just what kind of game he thinks he’s playing at.”

In the face of such a hot-blooded threat, Tegata couldn’t help but laugh.

“Thank you.” He clasped Rin’s hand in both of his own. “I’m in your debt.”

“Too right.” The boy grinned. “Warning you, you might regret it.”

“We’ll see, and—Kinuka?” Tegata turned towards her.

The girl had been watching their exchange from across the room with a smile.

“I realise I’m in no place to ask this of you,” he said, “but—”

“I’ll help too.”

Not even a fraction of hesitation.

“You will?” Tegata asked.

She nodded. “I can’t bear to sit here and hear about all these poor children going through that,” she said. “So horrible. I want to save them too.”

“Thanks, but are you sure? This won’t be easy. One of us might die.”

“I’m not trying to be some kind of hero. I have my own reasons as well. Besides, someone has to keep a leash on Rin. You won’t be able to handle him otherwise.”

“Hey!” His outrage was, admittedly, getting slightly predictable. “I’m not some kind of dog you can keep tied up to a fence!”

Kinuka had to admit, she did enjoy yanking his chain every now and again.

Tegata smiled. “I believe you. Thanks.”

“I hope we get along.”

“Hey!” Rin didn’t like being ignored one bit. “Are you just going to ignore what she just said?”

“You seem to be getting awfully upset about it.” Tegata glanced his way. “She might’ve had a point.”

Rin glared at them both, hoisted himself back up onto the rafters and resumed angry munching of his block of ramen.

“Sho…” He swallowed a large mouthful. “What’s next? We going after these people or what?”

“As soon as you’re ready. As it stands, I don’t think you are.”

Tegata had chosen to stare out the window so to avoid catching sight of Rin eating, but learned the futility of that decision as he saw the boy’s reflection in the glass instead.

“Wha' makesh you shay tha'?”

Rin was already on his second packet of ramen.

“You’ve only just awakened to your psychic abilities,” Tegata explained, sitting back down. “Your specialty, too. Pitting you against JPRO now would be idiotic bordering on suicidal.”

“Nonshensh,” Rin said thickly, before gulping. “I could take them easily. After all, their top couple of guys tried and failed to kill us earlier. Amateurs, if you ask me.”

Maybe if he sounded confident for long enough, Rin thought, he'd convince himself of the delusion eventually.

“If Tegata hadn’t arrived when he did,” Kinuka put both hands on her head. “That guy with the hat—Hakana—he would’ve killed us both.”

Tegata nodded.

Rin tipped the rest of the ramen shavings into his mouth. “Like you would’ve been any good,” he said. “You were having a nice nap on the pavemen' whilsh I—” He swallowed— “was getting shot at.”

Kinuka rubbed the back of her neck from where she’d been struck. It was still a little sore.

“Pointing fingers isn’t going to help, Rin.” Tegata crossed his arms. “My point was that I need to train you both up before you’re ready to face JPRO. I’m strong enough to fight them, but I can’t do it by myself.”

“Yeah, I get that, but—”

Tegata wasn’t finished. “Besides, if you think Hideyori Hakana failed to kill you earlier, you’re out of your mind. If he’d really wanted you dead, you’d have hit the ground before you’d even heard the click of his trigger. Why else do you think he stood there and kept shooting at you point blank?”

This sounded like a trick question to Rin. “Because… I kept blocking his bullets with my frames?”

“Exactly. Hakana wanted you to do that, don’t you see?” Tegata glowered at him. “He was testing you, seeing how potent your specialty was so that he could report back to HQ.”

Rin paused. He opened his mouth and tried to think of something clever to say.

“I knew that,” was all he could come up with.

He hadn’t been terribly successful.

Tegata sighed.

“So,” said Kinuka, “why didn’t Hakana and the other guy kill us right away?”

Tegata was going to say something, but Rin decided his voice was more important.

“You said they were testing us, right? Then, they expected you to come and save us.”

Tegata’s eyes widened, but Rin wasn’t finished.

“I bet they’re expecting us to come ‘n save those friends of yours at wherever they’re being kept—you still haven’t told us where, by the way.”

“I was getting to that—”

“Not an invitation.” Rin held up a hand. “Besides, no point in killing only two birds when you can wipe out the third with the same stone at a later date.”

He was already unwrapping the third packet of ramen.

Kinuka had been eyeing that, as well as a box of sweets nearby.

“What?” Rin asked.

“Aren’t you going to…” She gestured at both items, then to Tegata and herself. “We’re hungry too, you know—”

“Then why didn’t you get your own?” Rin looked bewildered, before adding insult to injury and opening his mouth to take a bite out of the block.

A crow made of shadows then squawked next to his ear, and Rin nearly toppled off his perch, dropping the packet in fright. The crow caught it in its beak, flew over and dropped it in Tegata’s lap. He received the crow in one hand, and with the other passed both items of food over to Kinuka.

“Thanks.”

“You need it more than I do,” Tegata said. He whispered something to the crow and watched as it melted into his shadow.

Rin had since recovered his balance and was doing his best to kill Tegata through thought alone. It wasn’t as though he stood much of a chance in a fight—not yet, anyway. He started to sulk. “Buy your own food next time.”

“It’s your fault I’m even here to begin with!” Kinuka threatened him once more with her shoe.

“How many times do I need to explain? It was Architect who decided to stab you, not me. Besides, if you want to blame anyone, blame my deadbeat of a dad for getting us all into this mess!”

“Architect?” This had Tegata’s attention.

“Strange spirit of a jacked dead guy from fuck-off ages ago who’s now living rent-free in my head and won’t leave me alone,” Rin said, without missing a beat.

“A further spirit, then.”

“Yeah, that’s the—hang on,” Rin said. “How the hell do you know about that?”

“I have one of my own.”

“S'that right?”

He nodded. “The ritual they carried out on us at the facility was incomplete.”

“Yeah, so was ours. Architect said it was because we only had access to half the blade. That tracks, at least.”

Kinuka had finished the candies in record time and chimed in. “Speaking of, where is the blade? I checked, Rin, it’s not in your bag anymore.”

Rin looked three seconds away from a heart attack. He patted down his trouser pockets and his worry soon melted into relief. “Don’t scare me like that!”

He reached into one pocket and drew out a frame the size of a credit card.

Kinuka and Tegata both stared at it.

“Figured out this little trick earlier.” Rin spun the shape between his hands before pulling it apart at the corners. The frame grew to five times its size. He snapped his fingers, and the shape’s white outline disappeared, the ascension blade falling into his lap, safe and sound.

“How did you do that?” She asked.

“Framework.”

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

Rin grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “Sometimes,” he said, “my genius is almost frightening.”

The grimace he received wasn’t what he expected. It had certainly sounded far cooler in his head. Rin made another shape around the knife and restored it back to its credit-card form factor, tucking the frame inside his wallet.

“Good,” Tegata said. “You’ve already started to get a handle on your specialty: Framework, right?”

“Pretty cool name, huh?”

“You didn’t name it.”

“Yeah I—” Rin blinked twice. “Wait, how do you know?”

Kinuka clapped to get his attention. “Tegata’s been training his specialty for years! He'd know better than you would.”

“None of our specialties are unique to us,” Tegata explained. “That’s the point of our Further Spirits. We’re their inheritors.”

“Oh yeah?” Rin smirked. “So? What’s yours?”

“Shadow Puppet,” he replied.

Not nearly as cool-sounding as Framework, Rin concluded.

“…allows me to manipulate my own shadow,” Tegata continued, swallowing the last of his own instant ramen. “You’ve seen it in action. I can animate projections of anything I cast my shadow into. I need a source of light, though. If it’s too dark, or if I can’t cast my shadow, I can’t use my ability.”

“That’s what those birds were, right?”

“They have names.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

Kinuka thought Tegata's patience was incredible.

“That move of yours earlier, the one you finished the Reject off with. You gave it a name, didn’t you?”

“What, you mean Severence Planar?” Rin asked, making a familiar chopping motion with one arm.

“Yeah. Why did you do that?”

“Oh, Architect told me to.”

That wasn’t a complete lie, either. Had that been the sole motivator, Rin wouldn’t have bothered. Architect had annoyed him far too much to deserve anything like as much obedience. The real reason why he did it was that every cool anime character needed cool ability names to shout out in the middle of battle—not that he’d ever admit it.

“You did it to sound like an anime character, didn’t you?” Kinuka deadpanned. She saw so far through him Rin was convinced she could see the other side of the city.

Rin half-snorted, half-coughed, grasping the beam he sat on for support. “No!”

“Psychic energy is derived from consciousness, from cognition,” said Tegata. “Names hold power in the mind, so techniques that are named have a stronger impact than those that aren’t.”

Rin remembered this paraphrased from what Architect was trying to tell him, something he was only half-paying attention to. One thing wasn’t making sense, though.

“That all makes sense, I guess, but why are you telling us all this?” Rin’s face soured in suspicion.

“All of what?”

“About your specialty! Let’s say I’m your enemy, and I’ve just decided to kill you,” Rin was, of course, speaking hypothetically, but the grin he wore was enough to make anyone think otherwise. “You’ve just told me the name of your ability, what it does, as well as its weakness.”

“And?”

“You’re still not seeing the problem here?” Rin squinted at him. “How dumb are you? You’ve just given the game away! If I was working for JPRO now, you’d be dead meat.”

Tegata laughed.

Rin didn’t like being left out of a joke. “What’s so funny?”

“Your instincts are good, Rin, but you really don’t know the first thing when it comes to psyche, do you?”

Rin wished right now that he had a shoe to hand to throw at him like Kinuka always seemed to. “Are you going to tell us?” He said. “Or are you just going to sit there and laugh.”

“What would you do in my position?”

“Knowing Rin?” said Kinuka. “Probably sit there and laugh.”

“Mind if I do that, then?”

“Fuck off!” Rin slapped his knees. “You’re not me, you could never be me! Out with it!”

“Sorry.” Tegata took a deep breath. “I’ll give you a hint. You’re talking about counter strategy, right? Working out the way to outsmart an enemy, made easier by the fact they’ve just told you how their power works.”

Rin genuinely couldn’t see where the flaw in his logic was.

“Let me ask you this,” Tegata continued. “What’s more effective in learning: when someone tells you the answer, or when you work it out for yourself?”

“Is that really a question?”

It wasn’t as though Rin was going to be taught abstract geometry when he was just starting out high-school, after all.

“A battle between psyche users is a battle of wits,” Tegata continued. “If you come to understand how someone’s specialty works, what do you think that’ll do?”

Rin paused and scratched his chin.

“If it’s all to do with cognition,” Kinuka said. “Psychic energy and everything, if you manage to work out how an ability works on your own, do you put up some kind of effective mental defence against it?”

Tegata nodded.

The penny then dropped for them both.

“So,” Rin said. “What you’re saying then is that by explaining your powers to someone before they’ve had a chance to work it out for themselves, you’re preventing them from building up a defence against your ability?”

“You catch on quick.”

There was a resounding ‘Oh’ as the remaining dots all joined themselves.

“Why didn’t I think of that…” Rin murmured.

“I didn’t expect you to.” Tegata shrugged. “It’s counter-intuitive until you look at it with the right perspective.”

“Perspective…” Rin repeated.

There it was again, that word ‘perspective.’ Architect hadn’t stopped blathering on about it when they’d first met. He still didn’t know what it meant in context, and was beginning to feel quite stupid for having not cottoned onto it yet. All of this information, it felt like a dense fog had settled over his mind, making coherent thought impossible. This wasn’t like him. He was usually able to think clearly! Rin clutched at his head. Something wasn’t right. A dull pain ached behind his eyes.

“Something the matter, Rin?”

The world was starting to spin. He blinked, fixing Kinuka with as straight a gaze as he could muster.

“Yeah, I’m… fine.” The effort that took was more than he’d like to admit.

Tegata looked alarmed. “You’ve gone pale.”

“What…?” Rin pretended he wasn’t using every inch of energy to stay upright. “No, I’m… fine…”

Rin let his eyes drift shut and, for a second, he could’ve sworn he felt himself falling. The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back, Kinuka and Tegata crouched down next to him.

“What are you—”

Tegata shushed him. “You’ve overexerted yourself.” He looked annoyed, though strangely enough with himself, not with Rin.

“Is he alright?” Kinuka, though concerned, sounded just as weary.

“Both of you need rest, now.” The way he spoke didn’t leave much room for discussion. “Kinuka, you go and lie down as well.”

She did as she was told.

“You should’ve stayed put,” Tegata said.

“Ungrateful bastard…” Rin mumbled. “I saved your ass back there…”

“You’ve overexerted yourself, Rin,” he repeated. “You used your specialty too much tonight. You expended too much psychic energy.”

He cursed.

“This is all my fault. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have overwhelmed you with so much information whilst your psyche was still so fragile.”

“Hey, who’re you… calling fragile?” Despite the boy’s hands holding him down, Rin struggled and made an instinctive grab at Tegata’s face, which now seemed to only be getting further and further away.

“Goodnight, Rin. For both our sakes, let’s hope you sleep well.” Tegata raised a hand. Jabbing at Rin’s third eye, just like that, the boy was out for the count. Not long after, Kinuka received the same treatment. She put up markedly less of a fuss.

Sighing, Tegata moved to stand near the room’s solitary window. He let his forehead rest against the glass. Another sigh later, and his breath had fogged it all up.

“You ought to be resting as well.”

Now it was Tegata’s turn for a ghostly visit. He turned at the sound.

“Marion…”

The hooded figure, Marion, had several red strings wrapped tight around his throat, wrists and waist, strings that stretched up into the air like a doll’s. His posture was limp like one, too, stringy hair dangling over its face, obscured in shadow.

“You’re troubled.”

It wasn’t a question.

Tegata looked at his empty fist and clenched it.

“I was in a rush,” he said through gritted teeth. “I put them through too much in too short a time because of my own weakness, and nearly lost them in the process.”

“You’re still blaming yourself?”

“Who else?” Tegata looked back. Both Rin and Kinuka were sound asleep. At least, that’s what he hoped. “This is all part of my selfish crusade, as you yourself put it.”

“I told you, Tegata…” Marion raised and pointed a bony finger. “You’re no saviour, you’re—”

“—a survivor,” Tegata said. “Yeah—heard you the first time.”

“You did what you thought was right.”

“I'm trying my best, I—”

“Are you not confident in your own decisions?”

Tegata clenched his fist again.

“I don’t know.”

“They’re both strong.” Marion nodded. “You still have time, Tegata.”

“I know, it’s just—”

The spirit waited for an answer, but the boy simply let his hand drop to his side.

“You’re right. I’ll… I should be getting some rest.”

Marion nodded, fading from sight. Tegata looked at the other two, then back at the window.

Who knew whether or not he was doing the right thing? Marion seemed as hesitant as ever to offer judgement, only brief consul. Tegata knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get it, but was he strong enough? Were his actions even justified? Was anything he did even going to make a difference?

Those were three questions Tegata couldn't answer. He wasn't even sure whether or not he wanted to. His conviction was shaky enough as it was.

With a flick of the switch behind him, both lights were extinguished in an instant; the light in the dusty bulb overhead, and the light on that particularly damning train of thought.

He needed to get some rest, after all.