XCEL

Ten Years Before Current Events

Chiyoda Special Ward, Tokyo

“Mom, where are we going?”

“Not much further now, sweetheart,” soothed a young woman, dressed in an elegant pinstriped blue blazer and pencil skirt. She led her protesting son by the hand through the heart of the Tokyo Metropolis. Only two blocks away from the National Diet Building—political heart of the nation—the bustling streets were packed with people. They loomed over the child—unable to make out their faces, as he desperately fought through the crowd. Even as early as mid-morning, the July heat beat down upon the streets, only adding to the discomfort and claustrophobia.

Tegata Kage had been whisked from the house early that morning with no explanation. Today was his tenth birthday. It had just been him at home recently. His mother left for work before he got up for school, and returned late at night. She had seemed distracted lately. She never looked in his direction anymore, never truly paid him much mind. Whenever their gazes met, it was never for long. Her eyes glistened, then closed. His father, Roman Kage, had been “away on business” for a long time. He was forbidden from asking about it anymore. His mother spoke his name with an air of finality.

That had been years ago.

Perhaps they were going on a trip! Tegata had been to the zoo with his class not too long ago, and loved it. The animals were all so friendly, and he had even been allowed to pet some! The corvids had been his favourite. They glared down from their perches with as much curiosity as he had for them. Their funny noises always made him laugh. Where would they go today? His mother hadn’t answered a single question for the entire journey. Perhaps she was trying to keep it a surprise? His legs felt hollow with anticipation. He could hardly wait! The streets were too packed to see where they were going. Tegata clung on for dear life. His mother’s firm grip made his hand go slightly numb. He looked up. Her lips were thin, pressed tight.

Was something wrong?

Before he could ask, his mother took an abrupt right turn. They surfaced from the crowd at last, and the boy found it much easier to breathe. They had stopped in front of a skyscraper, a piercing white structure, much like all those around. He already felt so small, and all these buildings towered like nothing he’d ever seen. Tegata craned his neck, but only just missed the large signage above the archway. They didn’t stop for long. His mother pushed open the double doors and marched inside.

“Welcome, Ms. Kage.” Another woman, dressed just as formal, approached the pair as soon as they crossed the threshold. “He’s waiting for you just beyond the foyer, as agreed.”

“I won’t keep him waiting.” Tegata’s mother smiled, though the corners of her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Come, Tegata.”

Tegata pulled back a little. “Mom, what is this place? Why are we here?” This building was so large, so unfamiliar. The interior was as blindingly white as the outside, the sun shining in through large windows and glistening off copious decorative chrome not helping matters. His footsteps echoed loud in his ears. His excitement had quickly soured into fear. “I don’t think I want to be here. I’m scared.”

“Don’t be silly.” His mother crouched down in front of him, looking into his eyes properly for the first time in weeks. She smiled, but Tegata shivered and took a step back. The smile was cold; it didn’t quite reach her eyes. It never did. “We’re just here to see a good friend of mine, okay? Can you be good for me?”

Tegata nodded and bit his lip. Dutifully, he followed his mother’s lead. They crossed the foyer, parting small gatherings of indistinguishable suits and through a door behind the reception desk. The dark corridor beyond was somehow even more cavernous than the entrance hall. Tegata clung to his mother’s hand, until they passed a heavy black door into a grand meeting room.

The door slammed shut behind them with a sound like thunder, and Tegata jumped. A titan of a man with close-cropped white hair stood at the far end facing a large mirror, powerful hands squared behind his back.

The moment he caught sight of the man’s face, Tegata froze. His breath hitched in his throat, and a wave of dread washed over his skin. His hand, numb and sweaty, slipped from his mother’s grasp.

The man’s face was picturesque, unnaturally chiselled—as though out of marble. He had high cheekbones, and two narrow, beady black eyes. The man spotted their reflection, and his timbre voice made the floor tremble.

“They say it’s rude to keep a lady waiting. I thought to arrive at the office extra early today—far ahead of schedule—for your sake alone, Hibiki my dear.”

Hibiki Kage raised a hand to her mouth and giggled. “Aren’t you a gentleman?”

“Aren’t I just?” The man turned around. His silver suit was simple yet pristine. With such a formidable presence, there was no need for any ostentatious display of grandeur. He crossed the room in two enormous strides, and seized Hibiki by the waist. His mouth warped into a possessive grin. The woman yelped playfully as he lifted her effortlessly off her feet and spun her in a circle.

“Oh, stop it.” Hibiki blushed. “It’s too early for that.”

“I decide when it’s too early.” The man unearthed a throaty chuckle, lifting her chin with one finger before letting her go. “Regardless, a pleasure to see you once more.”

“I’ve brought him, just as we agreed.” Hibiki motioned to her little boy, still just beyond the door. “Today’s the day.”

“Ah.” Gus turned to face him, and the boy’s blood turned to ice. “So, the little warrior has finally reached his tenth birthday. A commendable milestone.” One powerful step was all it took to close the distance. The man towered over him even more than the rest, a gleam in his eye.

“Say hello to Mr. Ishimatsu, darling,” offered a meek Hibiki.

A small voice welled up somewhere in Tegata’s throat. “Hello…”

“Greetings, Tegata.” Gus Ishimatsu took a knee, and his grin widened. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’d like to wish you a very happy birthday. Such an important occasion. It’s time someone treated you with the respect you deserve. Let’s shake hands like men.”

He extended a hand. Tegata eyed him, then look to his mother. Hibiki urged him on with that same distant smile. The moment he extended his own hand, Gus seized it. White hot pain shot along Tegata’s arm. He screamed.

Gus grin dropped into a snarl, and he rose with a jolt, still crushing Tegata’s hand in his own. The height differential was so extreme, Tegata felt himself lifted slightly off the ground. The pain only intensified. The bones in his hand felt about to shatter.

Gus seized Hibiki by the throat. “You dare to offer such a little mewling kitten?”

The woman gasped, eyes wide, fearful. “I raised him the best I could!”

“For a Queen, your excuses are pitiful.” He threw her against the wall. Hibiki yelped, crumpling on impact. “I’ll deal with you later,” he growled. “For now, I will make a man out of this pathetic little boy. Watch and weep.”

“Let go!” Tegata screamed for his mother, desperately straining against the vice grip this terrifying man had him in to no avail. “Mom, please! I don’t want to go!”

“Goodbye, my darling.” Hibiki opened glistening eyes. She waved a weak hand, that same smile still pinned to her cheeks. “Be a good boy, and don’t forget to behave yourself—” Her voice broke into a sob, her head flopping forward as tears ran unceasing down her cheeks. “Please, behave.”

* * *

Tegata’s apology had no effect on Tsushin Techukara. The girl’s fingers gave the odd, mechanical jerk, but her eyes didn’t so much as twitch. She stared ahead, as Tegata took a step forward.

“I don’t ever expect your forgiveness; for my cowardice, I deserve retribution.” Head tilted down, Tegata stared into her eyes still. Her eyes didn’t meet his. Her gaze was blank, unfocused. “Your kindness, I can’t ever repay. I shouldn’t have let them take you.” He took another step. Still, she didn’t react. Tegata, on the verge of yet another step, faltered. They were little more than a metre apart.

Slowly, his face broke out into a watery smile. “I’m so pathetic, aren’t I? Even now, my skin is crawling. I feel just like that little boy again. I’m scared, Tsushin. Won’t you hold me once more?”

A mighty crash sounded from the floor below. Dentaku Bango soared into the air with an empowered leap. “You thought that kick was enough to take me out? Seems you severely miscalculated.”

Kicking off the air behind him, condensed psychic energy burst in a neat purple ring behind his heel like a platform. Despite his taunts, Tegata took no notice. Bango’s jaw clenched, and he launched himself toward Tegata’s unprotected back, charging another Powerstrike.

A wall of shadows erupted in the space between them, stopping Bango dead. Without Tegata so much as moving a finger, the shadows morphed into the vicious snouts of Sed Jackal. Usually distinct, the creatures’ bodies had melded together. Their features distorted and sharp. Caught in the pool of shadows that surrounded Tegata and Tsushin like a forcefield, Bango’s feet sank into the bottomless shade. The ferocious jackals gnashed at his legs, tearing chunks out of his suit. Bango swore and kicked out, freeing himself from the deadly dark pool and jumping back.

Unconscious specialty activation? Hakana hadn’t told him about this. Bango backed up until the jackal’s distorted visages melted away, then began to circle the perimeter. He had approached from above, yet the shadows had risen in a wall to block his advance. He ground his teeth. There must be a vulnerability to this defence. He wouldn’t let himself be ignored like this. Normally, his Division function could take out any physical obstacle, but that required him to strike precisely at the line. A higher divisor meant more dividing lines—thus a greater chance to hit—but at higher cost to his psychic energy. The problem here, was where on earth would the dividing line be for a shadow? Approaching from a different angle, Bango recoiled in fright when the jackal lashed out at him once more. Leaping to the top of a pole, a different vantage, the boy crouched down, bit his lip and calmed his nerve.

That did the trick.

Once his rage subsided, his tunnel vision cleared, and he remembered his objective: Amibari and Kanon, those were his targets. If he could retrieve them for Mr. Ishimatsu, he would redeem his poor first performance twofold. He’d even gain the man’s favour. The nature of favour itself didn’t matter to him, but the opportunities such brought with it did. It would be another step towards his goal.

Another step in the right direction.

He concentrated, before detecting the resonance of their signatures not far away. Kage may have shunned him, but wasn’t his concern anymore. Huffing through his nose, Bango stood and leapt in the girls’ direction.

All the while, Tegata maintained his approach. He wasn’t conscious of anything happening around him, only the fading radiance of that girl who had been so kind for so long. The remnants of his sanity were in her keeping, they had always been, and he had let her down. Now, the remnants of his failure stared him in the face: those cold, unblinking eyes.

“Tsushin—” Tegata reached forward. “I’m here. Just like you saved me, this time—I swear—I will save you.”

* * *

“Theia Subject 181, entering containment.”

The guard’s lone voice echoed around the courtyard outside the JPRO facility’s formidable containment tower. He and another, faces blank, flanked a small boy hanging limp from the tight grasp under both arms. Now clad in a skintight grey jumpsuit, a thin, raw stab wound on the child’s forehead bled a trickle down his face. The dripping of red on the concrete never ceased, and neither did Tegata Kage’s futile struggle.

First, they had taken him to this strange place, through a door that didn’t lead anywhere until it did. The sky entranced and terrified him in equal measure. That awful magenta singed its vibrancy into the backs of his eyes within seconds. Even when he closed them, he could still see.

Bundled into the first of several identical metal rooms within the labyrinth, Tegata was thrown onto a table that bound serpentine coils of wire around his arms, legs and throat. Zuisaya Nori, the head doctor of the facility, was a slender woman whose slightest movement dripped venom. She observed the process with abject fascination through snakelike eyes. Tegata struggled; Tegata screamed for his mother—for anyone—to help, and the other scientists all retreated. In their place, she approached: silent, glaring.

“Pain is the most significant evolutionary mechanism; it punishes unfavourable behaviour.”

The doctor thrust one hand forward. Thin, fleshy tendrils erupted from her fingertips, piercing into his arm like barbed needles, and his entire nervous system violently turned itself inside out. An inferno scorched his brain, but only for the briefest moment. His nerves completely shot, the pain taught him to lie still. Half a knife fragment, a curved blade with a single wing extruding from the hilt was positioned into place above his forehead, and plunged deep into his skull.

A million colours conflagrated into sound. Myriad sensations burst behind his eyes. Everything was made clear, until the boundless information swallowed itself up into an abrupt singularity. The next, he faintly recalled a hooded man, suspended by strings.

The fascinated sounds of the observers cleared him for the next stage. Ushered along, not under his own will, they had stripped him down, violated every inch of him with their measurements: not a single detail left unobserved. At each stage, the head doctor watched, unerring, unblinking. They dunked his hair in a vat of bleach and pink dye to differentiate him from the others. The dye oozed and frothed, and stunk of decaying flesh.

All the while, the pain from the slit on his forehead never stopped. Each event played over and over in his mind’s eye, as the circular hole in the Prison opened. Gone was the magenta sky. Darkness engulfed him.

The dreary din rang in Tegata’s ears. There was no wailing, no screaming, no thrashing against the bars. Only a general murmur, a dirge of the dying. Immediately, he felt it too. With every forced step, his legs grew heavier. His stamina—his very will itself—drained from the pores in his skin, absorbed into the hollow stone walls. Cells lined the tower on all sides, and at the centre, loomed that slumbering, armoured titan. Up two flights of stairs the autonomous guards—so gaunt they may as well no longer be human—unlocked a simple barred cell, and tossed him inside.

Tegata hit the stone floor with a painful thud on his shoulder and slid to the back wall. He lay there on his side, his hands and feet twitching. His forehead wound, still fresh, sent painful twinges every other minute that made his skin shiver terribly. He felt sick, but couldn’t be. Everything felt raw. He was beginning to tremble all over. Silent tears leaked from eyes permanently shocked wide with paralytic fear. His hair fluttered in the ethereal draft, settling to lie across his face in a light, wispy curtain.

Wracked sobs stirred in his chest—the heavy, unconscious shaking of his diaphragm—and Tegata began to cry.

How much time passed, he couldn’t tell. No outside light reached this place, only that faint, eerie glow that resonated from the very air itself. He tried to stop the tears, lest it wrought another shot of unimaginable agony, but—a small mercy—that never came. All he had to contend with were the surges of blinding energy that discharged from deep within his own mind, sparks and twinges of current that made every muscle momentarily seize up.

His cries didn’t go unanswered for much longer. On his way in, faint resonance from all the cells—dim pinpricks of vigour, sapped of their strength—perforated that sensitive eye within his head. Now,

Tegata’s anguish had resonated with another, it seemed. Crawling tentatively up to his comatose form, Tegata felt a soft, clammy hand close gently on his exposed forearm. He started, sidling back against the wall. “Who’s there?!”

The figure retreated, rising to sit slightly more upright. Still breathing heavily, Tegata’s vision acclimatised to the ethereal blue ambience, until the silhouette of another came into view. She had straight black hair to her shoulders, and large, almond eyes that shone despite the lack of light.

“Are you okay? You were crying…” Her voice was mellow, subdued. She sounded just as scared as him.

Tegata sunk back against the wall, tucking both knees up too his chest. His heartrate began to slow. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

She smiled. “I’m Tsushin. I’m a friend.” She paused, and pursed her lips. “There aren’t many friends here. Everyone else is always asleep, dreaming horrible things. That’s how they keep us here, otherwise we would all leave. The Warden makes us sleepy, but I don’t want to go back to sleep. What’s your name?”

The boy hesitated. “Tegata.”

She giggled, and shuffled a little closer. “You woke me up. Thank you, Tegata.” Her smile widened, and Tegata found herself returning it.

“Seeing as you’re awake—” Slowly, he uncurled from the corner— “Will you be my friend?”

Tears gathered in Tsushin’s eyes. They dotted the floor, much like his own. “I will.”

Tegata smiled, before another painful twinge from his forehead made him cry out and curl inwards. His breath hitched, and he clutched at his forehead. Tsushin shuffled closer, and lay a hand on his back. “Tegata, please listen to my voice.”

It rang in his ear like a chime; so calm, so still, it cut through all the horrendous noise.

“Please, Tegata. Look into my eyes.”

Tegata lifted his head, albeit with difficulty, and did as asked. Tsushin, still smiling, held his face in both hands. A third eye opened wide in the middle of her forehead, and exuded a soft glow. Suddenly, the pain vanished. Tegata’s mouth hung slightly open, and a cool, deep breath flooded his lungs. Everything, at least for that little while, seemed calm once more. Tegata exhaled, and uttered his breathless thanks.

“It’s really scary, but you’ll be okay,” Tsushin whispered, cradled his head closer to her chest. “I’m glad you’re here, Tegata.” Her voice began to waver, on the cusp of breaking. “I’ve been asleep for so long. It’s so lonely. I don’t ever want to sleep again; that’s where those horrible screams live.”

Tegata cradled her cheek with cold fingers. “It’s okay. I’m your friend now. I’ll save you from those screams.”

“And I won’t let you hear them.” Tsushin wrapped her arms around him, and held on tight. “Let’s stay like this for a while, okay?”

* * *

The midday November cloud opened up above Yorusada Mall’s segmented glass canopy, just as Tegata finally wound his arms around Tsushin. Welcome rays sun begin to warm the back of his neck, congratulating. One hand held the back of her head, heavy and cold to the touch, and pulled it gently towards his shoulder. Her chest barely moved, but Tegata felt the faint, raspy hint of her breath brush softly against his collar. She was still in there.

“I’ll save you from those screams.”

Tears welled up in his eyes once more, and Tegata bowed his head into her shoulder. He held her closer still and felt, much to his joy and astonishment alike, movement that wasn’t his own. Jerky to start with, Tsushin’s arms began to twitch. The twitch extended to her hands, and joints audibly creaked. Then, whole movement, strangely fluid, as she too raised her arms. Frozen fingers gripped weakly at the folds of his coat, then tighter. Tegata felt himself pulled forward, as the girl returned his embrace. His shirt began to stick to his skin. A wetness was spreading somewhere around his navel. Her chest began to heave against him. Tsushin was likely crying too.

“It’s alright. I’ve got you now.”

Tegata smiled, as every tense muscle in his back begin to loosen, just like it had on that first day. A warmth began to spread throughout his chest, almost a burning. How long had it been? The catharsis was enough to make him weak at the knees, but still he stood strong—for her sake. Eventually, it came time to draw away, Tegata, his hands still on her shoulders, moving them apart, just in time to see the silvery tip of her knife protruding through the centre of his chest.