XCEL

Iaijutsu: the essence of sword-drawing. The moment the guard clears the scabbard, time dilates. A single action from start to finish, without delay. The scabbard protects the blade, and the inside is oiled to allow seamless removal. The moment before the draw, the swordsman clears all doubt from the mind, moving the centre of their being into their sword. The two move in perfect harmony; the sword, an extension of their soul. The instant it is drawn, the metal cleaves through space itself, and the world is reflected within the arc of its blade.

Single Sword Stroke: Worldspan Mirror

一振抜刀「寰亘鏡」 Isshin Battō・Kansenkyō

So very fluid, in that single instant. The moment the metal of Rikiya Atsura’s second katana cleared the scabbard, the man slashed another line through the very essence of the world itself: a perfect plane, a mirror.

No matter how agile Dentaku Bango tried to be, no matter how much he used Number Theory to increase his speed, the mirror would always slice him in two. This time was no different. Reality was mirrored along the line of Atsura’s slash, and Bango saw his other half reflected in the line that cut him diagonally across the chest. Incapacitated, he fell to the floor for the umpteenth time, cursing his own ineptitude. What was he missing?

“Have you had enough yet, Bango?”

Rikiya Atsura sheathed his second katana, and the world returned to normal. Nowhere’s depths were truly endless; the current room was a suitable expanse for training, or bouts between psychics. The roof was cavernous; the floor, concrete. Hexagonal columns jutted from the floor into artificial mountains, obstacles to be overcome. There was no beauty to be found here, none. The beauty of the world is abundant, but they were not in the world.

“Absolutely not.” Bango rose to his feet, shaky. He dusted the shoulders of his suit jacket. He and Atsura faced one another, ten metres apart. He wasn’t going to give up now. “I can still keep going.”

“I don’t think that you should.” Atsura, eyes closed, removed both swords from his belt. He sat back on his heels, and lay both swords out in front of him. “It is madness to commit multiple attempts in the same manner and expect different results. I had hoped you would have realised it sooner. This makes your fortieth attempt.”

Bango’s jaw clenched, breathing heavily through his nose. “I’ve tried everything.” The manners in his tone were being stretched taut. “No approach I’ve tried—no matter how varied—has been enough to escape being cut in half by your Specialty, Mr. Atsura.”

“But have you stopped to consider why?”

Bango hesitated.

Rikiya Atsura waited patiently for an answer, wide shoulders relaxed. The samurai wore a traditional burgundy and white hakama under a kimono that was styled to look like a suit jacket. He had a permanent stubble, and wild black hair tied back with pins. Everything was perfectly symmetrical: the way he sat, the position of his eyes; Dentaku could even see every single strand of hair mirrored on the other side. It was uncanny. Such perfect balance.

“I haven’t.”

“Then try. Why are you doing this? Why are you here?”

“I’m here to improve my Specialty. I need practice.”

“That’s not the true reason, is it?”

“No.” Bango exhaled through his nose. “The first chance I had to prove myself, I lost. Even after grasping this power, I still couldn’t surpass him.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sit, Bango.”

The boy did as told.

“Why did you join the organisation to begin with?”

“It’s an entirely selfish reason.” Bango sat cross-legged, looking Atsura between the eyes. “I joined to use you all to further myself. I was promised power, a realisation of my true potential, in exchange for my services. That’s all.”

“All this, just so that you are able to do what, exactly? Why do you need this power?”

“I need to get through to him.”

“You mentioned his name, before: Rinkaku Harigane.” Atsura’s brow furrowed. Recognition, perhaps? Bango couldn’t tell. Nevertheless, the boy nodded.

“I need him to see me for who I truly am, for what I truly am: a threat, an equal. No, not just equal. To prove that above all else, I am the superior of us both.” Dark flames burned behind his eyes. “I refuse to be left behind.”

“I will make no judgements.” Atsura placed both fists on his knees. “Your resolve by itself is strong, but strength without purpose is wasted. Your mentality is still far too immature. You are misguided, Bango. You are lost, you are scared, and you are alone.”

Bango took a sharp breath. “That’s not true.”

“If you do not believe me, then I shall demonstrate.” Atsura picked up his swords and stood, replacing them back at his hilt. “Stand, Bango, and attack me as before. Do your very best, hold nothing back.”

Bango didn’t need to be told twice. The boy leapt to his feet. Immediately, his third eye split open, psychic energy pulsing around him in rhythm. The past few days of his training had borne fruit: by modelling the flow of his psychic energy around the simple harmonic oscillator, Bango found he could regulate and sustain a much greater extent of power, evenly distributed throughout his body, at only a fraction of the cost.

Font of all knowledge, check my flow.

His psychic energy surged, and Bango’s field of view widened. His focus heightened, and he conjured the series of hand signs to activate his technique.

Number Theory, Technique Release

数値理論、術式開放 Sūchi Riron, Jutsushiki Kaihō

Function: Arithmetic

関数「算術」 Kansū・Sanjutsu

Rikiya Atsura stood perfectly still, breathing calm, hand resting on the hilt of his sword, fingers splayed. Bango watched with care. He had since learned to multiply the depth and resolution of his eyesight, to pay attention to the closest detail and sacrifice nothing. Every time Atsura activated his technique, he first touched each of his fingers in sequence to the hilt of his sword, starting with the smallest. This process took a minimum of one second between the first finger landing and the fourth, before his technique was fully primed.

Atsura’s index finger touched the hilt. Assuming all four fingers fell at the same rate, 0.75 seconds remained.

Bango’s window of opportunity started now.

He wasn’t going to let the man draw his sword.

Another facet of his Number Theory was psychometrics: the ability to measure and divine numerical information. The distance between them was 10.351 metres exactly. His top running speed was 12.881 metres per second, but that was only after 5 seconds of acceleration. This wasn’t nearly good enough. Just now, Atsura’s most recent sword draw happened in 0.10179 seconds. Legendary technique with a sword, psychic abilities notwithstanding. Unlike Harigane’s Severance Planar, Atsura’s technique had absolutely no travel time. The moment the sword arc was complete, the mirror plane instantly cut through and disabled him. Simple rearrangement of the speed-time equation meant he needed to multiply his top speed by a minimum factor of 8 in order to close the distance in the time of Atsura’s sword swing, but that came with another consideration. Even with psychic energy reinforcement, there was an upper limit to the forces of acceleration he could reach before his body literally started breaking apart. Accelerating to over 100 metres per second in the minuscule window of time available would create far too much backlash.

Two fingers on the hilt. 0.5 seconds remaining until the slash.

There was another option, one Bango wasn’t even sure was possible.

The distance between them was 10.351 metres.

His Fundamental Arithmetic allowed him to operate on the world with the four basic operations.

What if he was thinking about this the wrong way?

What if the key to reaching Atsura before the sword wasn’t to move himself through space, but to operate on the space itself! He would be moving. There would be no travel time, only however long it took for his technique to warp the space and translate him to his new relative location.

The spectral obelus flashed behind Bango. He pictured the distance between them as a line. They were connected by that line. All things in this world were connected by the lines of distance. All Bango needed to do was reach him. That was all. His wingspan was equal to his height, 184.41 centimetres. The distance from his right shoulder to his palm was 89.399 centimetres. He needed to reach within 80 centimetres of the man to be safe.

Three fingers on the hilt. 0.25 seconds remaining.

Bango raised a hand over his head. Yellow psychic energy coiled around his flattened palm into the blade of a knife. He struck down.

Division: Thirteen

除算「十三」 Josan・Jūzō

Within that millisecond, the space around Bango warped. The ambience of the underground training facility, the concrete columns and overhead depths, all lost their shape. Everything became a fluid mist as space itself moved around him. Bango instantaneously warped in front of Atsura. With a maddened gleam in his eye, he reached for the man’s sword hand. Only then, he saw it.

The fourth finger had already landed.

The slash was coming.

It wasn’t painful, being cut in half. Atsura’s mirror slash divided the world in two, and replicated each half on the other side: a perfect line of Symmetry. Depending on where the line bisected you, you suddenly looked very different. Bango had seen his upper body replicated below his navel, or felt two right hands. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t.

What if this time, it did?

Bango flinched. His reach stopped just short of Atsura’s wrist. The end of the sword popped out of the scabbard with a clink, but nothing more.

Bango awaited the inevitable: the world-splitting slash, punishment for his failure.

The silence was far more painful. It lasted forever. After all, that span of action just now—Bango’s entire thought process—had occurred in the span of one single second.

“In trying so adamantly to prove me wrong,” Atsura said at last, “you have only done the opposite.” He sheathed the blade once more, and removed his hand from the hilt.

Bango then remembered to breathe, and stumbled a few steps backward.

“Why did you hesitate?”

Bango looked at his fist and clenched it. “I don’t know.”

“You are still afraid.”

“I don’t feel afraid.” Nor did he look it. Bango still stood strong, albeit tense. Was that tension the essence of his fear? He didn’t know.

“Fear is not weakness. Do not bother saving face.” Atsura remained patient. “Fear has always been necessary for survival; those without it perish. Do you know the most important quality of man? It is symmetry. A symmetrical soul can be equally divided into its infinite constituent parts; each no greater than the other. Souls that are symmetrical do not stumble as they step along the tightrope. The winds of change may blow, but a truly symmetrical soul can weather any disturbance, no matter how strong. No human soul is perfectly symmetrical, yet those who strive to walk that middle path lead the longest and most fulfilled lives.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Fear is an agent of symmetry. You’ve heard of checks and balances, haven’t you? Fear is one of these checks. When confronted with choice, fear is the agent that holds one back. Sometimes, it acts in error—no agent is perfect. Often, however, the hindrance is necessary. Fear can prevent you from treading a regrettable path, to stop you before you cross the point of no return.”

Bango knew about the evolutionary advantage of fear. Its most primal form was an avoidance of death—the ultimate fear for anything with sapience. “I’ve already crossed that point. I know I can’t turn back now.”

“Indeed. You have thrown yourself into a world that you do not—cannot—understand. Your ambition overpowered your fear, and led you down this path. Yet, still your fear remains. It isn’t always expressed through conscious emotion. It is present in every step taken by every man that has ever lived.” Atsura folded his arms, brow furrowing. “You have the resolve to initiate action, yet lack courage to see it through. You continually lift your foot to take a step, but freeze before your foot touches the ground.”

Bango grit his teeth. Blood surged past his temple. Harigane’s words from the day of infiltration echoed still, words that flash froze his blood, bile, and brain. That hesitation, that fear, had ultimately resulted in his humiliation.

“Do you have the resolve to kill me, Dentaku Bango? That’d prove your point, wouldn’t it?”

It had kept him awake for far too long. Would it truly? By technicality, yes, but such a victory would burn pyrrhic at best. What good would it have been to prove his worth over a corpse? The sight of Harigane that fated day had made the engine of his rage roar with white-hot flames of vindication. Yet, the image of his rival departed from this world plunged his soul into the deepest ocean trench.

“Have you ever felt afraid?” Bango clenched his fists by his side. “Afraid to actualise the deepest desire in your heart, even when presented with the opportunity?”

Atsura’s brow furrowed. The man looked down, and didn’t answer. “I will tell you once again, Bango: Fear is necessary. In error or otherwise, fear never acts without reason.”

Bango bit the inside of his cheek. Reason? He had always attributed fear down to his own personal weakness, dead weight to be discarded like a sandbag if he ever hoped to catch up with his rival. Yet, now the flames of his rage were overtaken by something else. What was the reason behind his fear? Concern? No. Every Powerstrike he landed, his fist had sung with triumphant pain. He had already reached Harigane during their fight. He had wounded him. Then why did he still lag behind? If he had already touched Harigane in their fight, why was he still unable to reach him?

The same still had plagued his dreams since the incident. Insurmountable darkness behind threatened to swallow him whole, juxtaposed ahead by the brilliant burning of the sun. Distorted heartbeat drums shook his very bones. His rival stood ahead of him, always facing away. Framed in glory, he eclipsed the glaring light. His outline blazed golden splendour, just as when he had first stood up to those Rejected. Bango knelt on the ground, frozen. His arm reached forward, but never grasped.

“And yet, all this time, I’ve never seen your face. All this time, you never turned around. All this time, I’ve been chasing an idol.”

Just like in his dream, if he carried on in this way, he would never go anywhere. An idol could never move. It was a statue, nothing more: a facsimile created and given worth exclusively by admirers. The flashes of fear had all been warnings. Had he struck Harigane dead that day, he would have passed the point of no return. He would have remained stuck behind that idol for the rest of his life, gazing ahead in wonder. It would never move, and neither would he.

He found himself there once again. That accursed eclipsing idol loomed ahead of him once more, but the light of the sun wasn’t so glaring to Bango anymore; the drums, no longer so loud. Bango lowered his arm, and got to his feet. His legs felt light; his whole body, rejuvenated. He wrenched his gaze away from the idol, and stared directly into the light. Before, he had only seen glimpses: the aura of the idol he himself had created. The light did not pain him anymore; it did not scare him. It only warmed him now. The giddy smile of emancipation lit up Bango’s face. He took step after triumphant step further into the light.

At long last, he looked back, and he laughed. That faceless golden idol had been cast out of bronze all along.