XCEL

“They were here last night?”

“That’s what all the evidence suggests, Detective Ibuse. Cameras and eyewitness accounts from around the time: both point to a commotion we detected happening here last night at around 7:49 pm.”

“Right. Thanks for filling me in, officer.”

The man bowed and rushed off. Nagora Ibuse looked around, scratching his head. He stood in a small park green, south-west of the central business district. Any trace of the perpetrator had vanished, but the evidence of their fight remained. Several of the metal railings had sizeable dents in the bars, a large cherry tree behind him had fallen over, its trunk crushed by a sudden impact. Over on the other side, a sizeable crater had been knocked into the brickwork of a nearby building, debris scattered everywhere. All around the place, patches of grass had been torn up and tossed aside.

More importantly, this was close to a convenience store where Rinkaku Harigane had been sighted.

He’d been assigned lead investigator into this case. The last of the witnesses from Senketsu High School had only just left the station. He hadn’t slept a wink since then. Strong coffee was all that was keeping him conscious for the time being.

He’d never investigated destruction on this scale before. The crater of the wall alone reminded him of the damage he’d seen when he was shown the damage at Senketsu. He’d asked the forensics team at both places, and there were no residual traces of any explosives.

That had been his first guess.

What else could have created that amount of force?

Something superhuman; those monsters with their brutal strength had torn apart this park just like they had the school. Where were they now? Had they moved on somewhere else, bringing their destructive carnage with them? None of the witnesses had reported a direct sighting of the incident: only the sound of the commotion.

Dentaku Bango and the other students’s accounts formed a consensus. When Harigane by whatever means had destroyed those creatures, only black ash remained. The corpses disintegrated in real time before their eyes. If that were only one eyewitness account, Ibuse’d kindly shuffle them along for psychiatric evaluation and trauma therapy. With ten or more, though? That kind of evidence was irrefutable.

What had the investigators found here? Particles of black ash spread like soot all over the place, scattered by the morning breeze. Whatever these creatures were, they seemed incompatible, fighting to sustain their own existence. They’d been rejected by nature. Every step he took towards finding out the truth of this case, the further down the rabbit hole he tumbled. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d had to doubt what he thought of reality just to keep on track with the eyewitness accounts.

“You seem to be having a deal of trouble, officer.”

A new voice snapped Ibuse out of his thoughts. A tall, androgynous figure approached, hands clasped together behind a black tailcoat. Head tilted down, wavy blond curtains covered invisible eyes, leaving only an eerie grin.

“Excuse me,” came a voice from Ibuse’s right. Another uniformed officer descended on the newcomer with his hand out. “This is a crime scene currently under police investigation; citizens are prohibited from en—”

The stranger snapped its fingers, and the world was put on pause.

The officer stopped mid-sentence, lips frozen mid-expression. Halted in his tracks, he mirrored everything else, save for Ibuse. Even the birds were locked in place, the sun suspended in the sky.

“What the hell just happened?” said the stranger, before the words had even left Ibuse’s lips. “A very good question for another time. Now, where was I,” they paused. “Ah. Your investigations. Are they going well?”

“You just froze time.” Ibuse stared.

The figure applauded the man’s observation. “Handy, don’t you think?”

Ibuse was going to say something else, but the other beat him to it. “No, I’m not a god.” It sighed. “And sorry for predicting your sentences. It’s a nasty habit of mine.”

“Who…” Ibuse waited for another auto-completion, but it never came; the stranger held its tongue. “Who are you?”

This puzzled the figure, as they spent the next few seconds cycling through languages to find one the man could understand. Eventually, “Toshina. How about that?”

Ibuse nodded, eyes narrowed.

“What’s your business? You asked about the investigations.”

“I did! Yes.” Toshina pointed ahead of them and patted the man on the back. “Walk with me, will you? There’s much to be discussed.”

Ibuse said nothing, but walked all the same.

“I’ll say again, you seem to be having a lot of trouble,” Toshina continued.

Ibuse didn’t know what was psyching him out more: it’s grin, or the fact he couldn’t see it’s eyes. The fact it spoke in metre unnerved him. He felt like Toshina already knew what he was going to say right from the onset.

“What do you know?” He asked.

“Oh, we’d be here all day,” Toshina dismissed the idea with a wave. “There’s no need to treat me with such suspicion. I came to offer my help.”

Ibuse’s brow furrowed. His director had explicitly informed him this case remained on a need-to-know basis. The less information they could risk being leaked to the public and inciting mass hysteria, the better.

“I meant about the case.”

“I know the truth.”

“Go on.”

Toshina’s voice suddenly lost its airy levity. Their grin disappeared.

“If you truly want to get to the bottom of this case, Nagora Ibuse, your current investigation will get you nowhere.”

Ibuse wasn’t even fazed when they said his name. He was dealing with someone who could stop time, for heaven’s sake. Continuing to carry on any kind of sensibility would only worsen his headache.

“You seem certain,” was how he chose to respond.

“Have you found anything so far?”

Nothing that doesn’t contradict everything I’ve ever known, Ibuse thought with a grimace.

“My point exactly.”

“What?”

“This case,” Toshina continued, “isn’t something that you or any of your fellow officers will be able to understand, no matter how hard or how long you look.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ibuse stopped walking.

Toshina turned to face him.

“This ‘case’ involves a conflict which has the potential to destroy the entire world.”

Even in stopped time, the seconds of silence that passed were painful. Ibuse didn’t know what to do, what to say. He simply stared.

“You don’t believe me? I’m not surprised,” it responded, shaking its head. Raising a hand, Toshina gently placed the pad of their index finger in the middle of the man’s forehead. “This won’t take long.”

Ibuse felt an electric current surge through his head and behind his eyes. Knocked off his feet, he was floating. All around him was a void. The ground had broken apart and intermingled with fragments of sky and sea, all in chaos. He tried to cry out, before realising he no longer had form. The world was tearing at the seams, cracks in the fabric of reality opened and shut, revealing an expanse of static beyond. He could see human bodies in their hundreds, all warped beyond comprehension; their faces were split and contorted. Then, he heard the screams: thousands of screams, souls trapped in the rift between the real and the unreal, suspended in perpetual agony.

He couldn’t bear it anymore.

When would it end?

The world then returned as quickly as it had left. Ibuse was back. He had fallen to the ground, now clutching at his head.

Toshina stood over him, watching.

“What the fuck was that?” Ibuse groaned, blinking. A shiver shot down his spine.

“The future,” Toshina said, idly examining the back of one hand. “Probably.”

“Probably?!” Ibuse struggled to his feet. “What on earth did you do to me? What even was that?”

“I just told you,” Toshina replied calmly. “It was the future. You’ll have to forgive me; the method of delivery was a little crude for my tastes, but uncomfortable truths are better faced firsthand. In my experience, it’s not the kind of information the human mind handles all too well.”

Ibuse blinked. Over the pupil of his right eye, the sigil of a clock-face gleamed.

Toshina grinned. “Shock aside, you should be better adjusted to it now.”

Ibuse was overcome by the strangest feeling. His fatigue disappeared, replaced with an electrifying sensation. Sparks shot down every single nerve.

“That vision,” he said. “Was that the destruction of the world?”

Toshina looked delighted. “You catch on quickly! Then again, I expected nothing less from the Ace.”

Ibuse grimaced. “They don’t call me that anymore.”

How did this person knew about Ace?

“You haven’t lost your touch.”

Ibuse rubbed his eyes. “So, let me get this straight. If whatever situation you’re talking about doesn’t get resolved, the world will end up looking like that?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What I don’t get is: why did you tell me of all people? I’m clearly not the right guy to do… whatever it is you need me to do.”

“Need?” Toshina shook its head. “Oh, no no no. I don’t need you to do anything. Whether that future comes to pass or not isn’t up to you. This was just to provide a little…” He snapped his fingers a couple of times, searching for the right word. “Context! Everything could do with a little more context, no? Besides, I thought you might appreciate the assistance. You do still want to solve this case, I presume?”

“Of course, but,” Ibuse's confusion deepened. “What… am I even supposed to do?”

“All you have to do is get to the bottom of this mystery. That’s your job, isn’t it?”

Ibuse nodded.

“Everyone has their part to play. Yours is being in the right place at the right time,” Toshina explained. “What place and what time, you might ask? That’s the reason for my visit. Once you’ve made it there, the rest—and how you react to it—is entirely up to you.”

“Right.”

One thing still wasn’t adding up.

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re helping me.”

Toshina shrugged. “Why not? Could be a stroke of boredom, could be a random act of kindness.” His grin suggested otherwise. “After all, seeing the same cycle repeat itself over and over again wears on the psyche after a while, wouldn’t you say?”

“What?”

Toshina grinned.

“Let’s get back on task, shall we detective?”

“Sure—”

“Are you looking for anyone in particular?”

“Yeah. Poor kid’s search warrant has been made public to aid in the efforts: Senketsu High third-year, Rinkaku Harigane.”

Toshina looked around. “Well, you won’t find him here.”

“Where, then?”

“Think about it,” Toshina told him. “Right place, right time.”

Ibuse held the boy’s picture in mind. He’d seen some photographs from official school records, magazines, television broadcasts and such. Rinkaku was a small, sallow, sulky kind of kid—a right pain in the ass to deal with, from what he’d managed to gather. With a mother no longer in the picture, and a father currently out of the country, the kid was officially suspected of charges of terrorism, that and kidnapping a fellow student. It was all too easy to label a student a domestic terrorist than it was to face the truth, Ibuse knew; the business about those horrific monsters was being kept as tight under wraps as possible, most likely for the best.

Where he would be right now, Ibuse wondered, if he were in the boy’s shoes?

And just like that, another vision flashed into view. His perspective jumped to miles away, to the right place at that time.

* * *

“That is a lot of police!”

“Shhh! Keep it down! They’ll hear you!”

Kinuka tugged sharply on Rin’s shirt, and the boy crouched back down to where they were both lying.

Having traversed the remaining distance until the home stretch, they’d spotted trouble shortly after rounding the corner, choosing instead to take refuge up on a nearby rooftop. Kinuka had chosen to use her arm as a climbing rope, whereas Rin had chosen to fashion—what was in his eyes—an extremely well-designed ladder.

The plan was to scope out the situation before continuing any further.

In any case, Rin’s assertion was correct. Twenty officers, give or take a few, all armed and dressed in riot gear, patrolled up and down the street. He sat up. Cupping his hands around his eyes, he mimicked a pair of binoculars. His vision actually magnified. He’d been pretending at first, but surprised himself when it had actually worked. Another application of his psychic powers, he’d reasoned. He christened this one “psyght.” He should get a medal for all these names. Some of the officers were deep in conversation, other on shifts spying for suspicious activity.

“Why the hell are they here?”

“Waiting for us to return home, I bet.” Kinuka said. “They know we’re both kids, and that we don’t have much money.”

“Couldn’t be.” Rin shook his head. “What kind of idiot do they take me for? You’d be out of your mind to return to the one place you know the police know about, for crying out loud.”

“Isn’t that what exactly what we’re doing?”

Rin sighed. “This is different. I’ve got something important I need to check out.” Rin squinted back down his eye-noculars. “You’d think they didn’t want us to come back here. Look, they’ve all got guns. If this was just a regular stake-out, don’t you think it’s a little odd for them to have fully uniformed, ballistics-clad riot police waiting for us? Two high-school students?”

Rin did make a good point, Kinuka had to admit—not to his face, though; she didn’t dare inflate his ego any further in case he exploded.

“Then why?”

“Dunno. I’ll be damned if I don’t find out sooner or later. I know the police are still looking for me and all, but this is excessive.”

“Should we turn back?” Kinuka asked. “We’d be breaking our promise to help Tegata if we got caught by the police now.”

“Fuck that. I want—I need—to see my dad’s research.”

“But how are we going to get past those guards? I know we’ve got these psychic powers and everything, but we’re still vulnerable to being shot—”

“Speak for yourself.”

“You only just survived the last time!”

“You’ve made your point. I’m not going to fight them.”

Kinuka was about to say something else, but Rin shushed her. “Just— for a second, please.” He slumped with his back against the wall. “Let me think of something.”

* * *

Nagora Ibuse snapped back to reality.

“I recognise that street.”

“What street?” Toshina asked. His clueless act needed work.

“I saw another vision.” Ibuse folded his arms. “I saw the Harigane kid and the other one, Amibari. They’re both alive, relatively unharmed, and seem to be working together.”

“Ooh. That’s a start!” Toshina clapped. “Go on.”

“They sat on top of a building, looking down over a residential avenue in the suburbs: not too far a walk from the metro station. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but the conversation seemed animated. Everything else is a bit of a blur.”

“That sounds like a lead to me, detective,” Toshina commented, mimicking the detective’s serious pose.

“You’re damn right it’s a lead.” Ibuse blinked. “That vision, that strange energy I feel. That’s all because of this, isn’t it? Whatever you did to me must’ve… done something to me.”

Dentaku Bango had been right all along. This whole business was steeped in the occult, and now here he was caught up in the midst of it as well.

Toshina shrugged. “I didn’t do much at all. I only showed you what you needed to see.”

“These visions,” Ibuse continued. “Can I trust what they show me?”

“How much do you trust your own eyes?”

Less and less recently, Ibuse thought.

Toshina brought his hands together. “That should be enough to get you started. You have my blessing. I wish you good luck.”

A snap of his fingers later, and the man was nowhere to be seen. Ibuse looked around, but saw no sign of them.

“What the—” said the other policeman, staring at where Toshina had been. He, and everything else, had resumed its course of motion. A breeze picked up over the park, as a flock of pigeons flew from a tree nearby.

“Detective Ibuse,” the officer said. “You didn’t see—”

Ibuse raised an eyebrow at him.

“Never mind,” the man said and shook his head.

“As you were.” Ibuse waved him away. “You and the others continue with the investigation without me. Let me know if you find anything new. I’ve got a train to catch,” he said, and turned on his heel.

He felt a little bad leaving the rest on the wild goose chase, but this lead seemed best pursued alone.