XCEL

Never again did Nagora Ibuse think he’d relate to the childhood sentiment of being utterly unable to fall asleep. He’d drifted into a blurry eyed fugue state after what had felt to him like ten minutes, watching soft pink clouds lined with gold and cherry red drift across the subdued, azure sky. Yet, no matter how many times he tried to close his eyes, sleep simply refused to take him into her arms. He supposed it made sense. He was married, after all. Though he doubted even Ayumi’s slender arms cradling his weary head would invite restful suspension in this by-definition superliminal space.

It wasn’t as though he didn’t try. Ibuse relinquished all feeling, all movement in all limbs, and tried his utmost to sink into the comforting metal of the car hood. All to no avail. To him, it felt like he’d been trying this for nearly two hours. Internally, Ibuse chided himself. He really had to stop trying to justify things in terms of time. Time didn’t mean nearly the same thing as it had yesterday, and if he was going to continue to be of any use to Harigane and the others, he’d need to adapt his mindset and soon. However, that was far more easily said than done.

Slowly, Ibuse raised his head from the bonnet, stretching both arms up to the Corridor of Time’s open sky. Sleep might have eluded him, but lying down on a hard surface like that had done absolute wonders for his back. And, on the bright side, the Corridor would make a perfect space to hide from his noisy juniors back at the station, giving him space to breath and somewhere to scream as well. Just like the clouds above him, this seemingly uneventful turn of events also held a silver lining.

Ibuse slid off the bonnet and patted the Mazda’s wing-mirror appreciatively, stretching out any remaining kinks in his back with a few twists, side-leans and toe-touches, before clambering back into the vehicle proper. One twist of the key ignited the engine with a triumphant roar as though exclaiming, “finally, we’re going somewhere!”

He was about to put the car into reverse, and head into the past, when the small errant voice of wanton curiosity piped up in the back of his head.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to see what the future held?

Lady Miren had often warned him against looking too far into the future, lest he lose sight of the beauty in the present. While the last thing he wanted was to disrespect her memory, that kind of advice—well-meant at the time—no longer applied to him anymore.

Ibuse fully depressed the clutch, foot rising until he felt the bite grab at his toes. Tires squealed on the tiles as the Mazda tore off further down the corridor. Ibuse watched the clocks out of the corner of his eye flash by. How far into the future did he even want to go: a few days? A month? It needed to be a fair bit forward for it to actually be worth his while, but he didn’t exactly want to spoil himself the joys of experiencing the world’s societal progress over the next however long. His experience of trying to sleep in the corridor gave him just enough circumstantial clues to figure out what the rules of time travel he was working with here.

Time didn’t pass inside the Corridor; nothing that related to time-passing happened either. He couldn’t fall asleep, he couldn’t tire himself out, he couldn’t heal from any wounds, but he could do useful things like think. From the moment he entered to the instant he left, his state was effectively locked. On the other hand, while outside the corridor, he would continue to age at the normal rate, be that in the past or future. This fact alone gave him reason to be wary. He was, as far as he knew, still gated by human life and health expectancy, and so couldn’t expect to live a thousand lifetimes and use the knowledge in the present day. His flow of psychic energy improving his physical abilities might have raised the cap a little, but it was humbling to have to re-accept the fact that that he was still ultimately doomed for the grave like anyone else, unless he wanted to spend an eternity sitting in this stagnant, albeit rather beautiful corridor. That wasn’t really an option. Ibuse had vowed to Lady Miren to always live his life enjoying his time on this earth, rather than wasting his days in paranoia of the inevitable end. He wouldn’t gain anything, or be of any use to anyone, by simply sitting here. Changing circumstance wouldn’t mean he broke his solemn vow.

Furthermore, his ability encompassed only time travel. Time travel in fiction nearly always encompassed spatial travel as well. He’d seen the odd subtitled episode of Doctor Who, and his Mazda, though lovely, wasn’t exactly the larger-than-life TARDIS. The car decided to punish him for that thought by shooting a jet of windscreen washer fluid through his open window. Ibuse yelped, locking one hand to the wheel as he furiously wiped the stinging liquid out of his eyes. “I deserved that. Sorry, girl.”

Stepping out of the corridor brought him back to the exact same point in space that he’d left, only at a different time. It was annoying. One of the key points of time travel—the ability to return to and witness important historical times or events firsthand, learning from important thinkers—would be made exponentially more tiresome if he had to physically travel to those locations beforehand. It made sense, but sense was often tiresome. Toshina wasn’t in the car with him now—he checked—but he imagined the fickle time spirit chortling with delight at his supposed protegee’s mounting despair at being faced with yet more irritating logistics, just with a different, more fantastical flavour.

Was that who he was now: protegee to a primordial phenomenon? That sounded awfully grand. It made Ibuse’s skin crawl slightly. He shrugged off the idea of bearing such a title. Time-travel and supernatural nonsense aside, he was just as Detective Ibuse as he had been beforehand. He’d leave the pompous delusions of grandeur to people unfortunate enough to actually have self-esteem issues. He had enough to worry about already.

Ibuse snapped back into focus. He’d been absentmindedly flooring it through the corridor for the past however long, one hand on top of his wheel. His other elbow rested on his windowsill, supporting his weary face with sore knuckles nested into the crook of his right cheekbone. He eased up until he could comfortably read what was written near the clocks. They displayed a different date now: January 1st, 2019.

Of course, the New Year! That would be a good event to start off his time-travelling journey proper with, wouldn’t it? It felt like cheating, but truth be told, Ibuse would never say no to seeing the city’s fireworks display from the harbour twice. It was bound to be spectacular both times. Hell, he might even be able to impress Sacchan by guessing which shapes and colours each firework was going to be. Ibuse smiled, slowing to a stop in front of a clock that read 00:36:50. The fireworks and festivities all carried on for a good while after the actual countdown, so he’d be able to get a good glimpse around Mihama Ward before he risked spoiling himself too much. He didn’t want to spend long in the future, lest he risked encountering another version of himself and creating a paradox. The rules of his Specialty seemed to be following vaguely Back To The Future precedent thus far, so he wouldn’t dare jinx himself now.

Rising from the driver’s seat, Ibuse shut the door behind him and instinctively went for his keys to lock the car. Did he really need to? Better to be safe than sorry. After all, he didn’t know for absolute certain that no-one else used this space. He hoped they wouldn’t mind him leaving her here for just a little while. Sauntering over to the door, Ibuse gazed at the ornate frame, eyes tracing over every minute design.

It felt very nice to not be in a rush for once. Ibuse hadn’t been able to afford a holiday since their honeymoon. Policework was a never-ending battle of preventing incidents that hadn’t yet happened, and making sense of what already had. It’d be nice to get some proper time off, without the worry of needing to be constantly on duty. Perhaps he’d take Ayumi out for a nice romantic weekend in the Sengoku Era, immerse themselves in some traditional culture and festivals as they were meant to be enjoyed. He’d never been much of a historian, but now he had absolutely no excuse. He’d do some research back home, after he’d helped Sachiko with her piano practice.

He’d get to that later. For now, it was time to enjoy the fireworks! They always set off a major display just off the bank of the TDL, and so, with Mihama Ward being right next to the bay, he’d be in prime position. Bracing his ears for the explosive onslaught, Ibuse willed the double sliding doors to open, and stepped forward into the light.

* * *

A different kind of explosion ruptured the road under Ibuse’s feet the moment the doors to the Corridor snapped shut behind him. The man let out a yell, psychic energy reflexively arcing through his nerves as impulse from the blast flung him into a steel and concrete building. Ibuse groaned, his ears ringing. The flames licked at his coat and face; debris clattered to the floor all around him; dust, and the stench of sulphur and burning petrol forced its way into his lungs. He coughed and spluttered, throwing himself forward out of the dent his body had made in the steel. He stumbled forwards further, only to half recognise the site of the National Petroleum Research Institute. Half the building was a crumbling ruin, and the other half was on fire. He needed to get away, before the next explosion took him along with it!

Ibuse put further distance between himself and the petrochemical inferno, stumbling into the centre of the empty road. Eyes wide, heart pounding in his ears, he could barely muster a sound beyond his desperate wheezes for breath. Spinning on his heel, the rapidly unfolding hellscape began to take shape around him. He looked skyward. The midwinter heavens had been completely overwritten. There was no sky anymore. In the distant beyond, the cityscape was replicated to the minutest detail on an impossibly high ceiling.

Where the mirror planes intersected, a geometric spiral twisted the landscape into a perpendicular panorama. His eyes began to ache; Ibuse felt the muscles near his retina start seizing up, but the sight was so horrific, he couldn’t look away. The horizon stretched for as long as he could see. The Makuhari district, where he stood, wasn’t far from the city limits—just half a mile to the northwest—but the reflection turned the horizon inward. All around him, repeating patterns of buildings stretched for miles. There was no barrier, just a seamless point where the world folded in on itself, bending reality as though the air itself had turned to glass.

There was no end.

Ibuse squinted at the skyline, and caught sight of a towering structure in the distance. Its stark, rigid profile progressively warped the further upwards it stretched. This ethereal tower, brightly illuminated, rose impossibly high, its reflections twisting and curving in the concave sky above. It had definitely not been there before.

The oppressive, general din descended on him once the piercing trill in his ears subsided. Utter chaos. Fires had broken out over the city at large: a rueful orange haze, an artificial sunrise of desolation in the dead of night. The muffled sound of faintly glimmering fireworks outside the barrier were a cruel irony to the raw, visceral tremors that shook the ground beneath Ibuse’s feet with an explosion that happened every fifteen and a half seconds.

Furthermore, roars and piercing screams from all around stole Ibuse’s attention to the hundreds of Rejected crawling out of the debris. The darkness somehow made the grotesque cyclopes even more fearsome. Their bodies strained, joints creaking, under the weight and pressure of so much dense muscle packed beneath stretched skin. Their singular, bulbous eyes all pointed eerily at Ibuse, all focused on the same target. He raised his fists, desperately scanning for an avenue to flee into and gain vantage. No such luck. The Rejected had rapidly encircled him, and were closing in. They howled and lumbered toward him, arms flailing, hands tearing bloodied gashes into their own faces.

Ibuse squinted hard to make out detail under the poor street lighting, supplemented only by the fire glow. The Rejected weren’t like the perpetrators of the Senketsu Incident. Those six wore identical black detail on their lower halves. These, however, wore ordinary civilian clothing. Granted, most of it had been torn to shreds by the gross and sudden increase in body size and muscle mass, but some scraps of fabric hung on. Ibuse knew any expression of gender became null and void in relation to these hellish creatures, but some of them had different shaped figures, and some were smaller, nearly half the size yet just as ferocious. Women and children. His stomach turned several successive flips, seeing their bodies crackle and bulge with the psychic energy overflowing from that central Eye, the source of their corruption.

On his duty as an officer of the law, he had to find out what was going on. To do that, he needed an unobstructed path. The Rejected were no longer human. They wouldn’t listen to sense. Ibuse’s eyes steeled with resolve. He’d take them out here and now. With them gone, any innocents nearby would be safe. Right here, right now: that was his duty. Seemed he’d arrived at the right place, right time, once again.

Kicking off into a sprint, Ibuse tore across the fragmented tarmac. Psychic energy sparked in waves over his skin, surging in wild arcs. He slowed down his own perception of time during approach, formulating a way to get rid of these things.

Harigane had told him over the phone—just in case he were to encounter any while out in the city—that the way to properly slay a reject was to sever its head. As grossly magnified as their physiology was, the Rejected were once human: the neck would remain one of the most vulnerable parts of the body. These drones—Harigane had labelled them such—lacked regenerative capability, but their bodies were strong enough to repel most physical blows. Unfortunately for Ibuse, time-travelling shenanigans aside, physical blows were about all he had. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to conjure boxes and blades, so he’d have to figure out some variation of the ol’ one-two to dispatch them without exhausting himself. There were nearly a hundred of the damn things.

Where had they all come from? Why weren’t they like the others? Did it have anything to do with the barrier? The ambience around him now felt similar to inside that distortion earlier that morning: an isolated space where the boundary between the physical and cognitive worlds had grown so thin, the fabric of reality was barely holding itself together by threads. An idea came to mind, and it wasn’t one Ibuse liked. The first reject drew near, matching Ibuse’s approach with a furious charge. The mutant threw the first blow, and Ibuse weaved to the right. Feinting back, he dodged the following swipe. Depth perception might be an issue, he argued. He drove his fist up into the creature’s jaw with a crack, the force of the psychic energy lifting a few inches from the ground.

Open The Door

開門 Kaimon

Ibuse manoeuvred behind the creature in stopped time, striking it in the back of the neck.

The reject howled and righted itself almost immediately, throwing its weight around like a bull.

Ibuse was forced to stop time again just to avoid being caught in the warpath. He retreated a few feet away and grit his teeth. It became increasingly difficult to maintain focus on just one target, when he had to constantly avoid being struck dead by the others! An empowered chop to the neck wasn’t fatal. He’d have to think of something else. He opened the door again and held it ajar to give himself some more time to think.

That move utilised against Meguru, Back Beat: it first came about by instinctively desynchronising his movements from what the man had expected, shifting his attack just far enough into the past that it struck true before the man could defend himself. That desync: could it affect others too? Others could move in stopped time while Ibuse made direct contact, but that wasn’t all. Rin and Ruri had been able to move in stopped time while in the Mazda, indicating an element of extended contact as well. While inside his car, Ibuse often felt it channelling his psychic energy. Cars were conduits, in every sense of the word! What if the external range that was allowed to move during his stopped time was limited to what he channelled his psychic energy into! When he reinforced his body and attacks, at the point of contact his psychic energy was, for the briefest instant, channelled into his target.

The man’s eyes lit up. An idea dawned, and a strategy behind it.

Circling back around the reject, Ibuse took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles and let his psychic energy flow. As soon as he let go of the door, time resumed. The reject didn’t even have an instant to turn around. Ibuse lunged at the back of its head, striking the creature upside the base of its skull. Intensely limiting the explosive flow of psychic energy to just the reject’s head at the moment of contact, at that same instant, he opened the door.

Convoluted Technique: Time Fracture

覶技「裂破断時」 Ragi: Reppadanji

A loud crack echoed throughout the urban battleground, as a small pair of golden screen doors slammed shut over the reject’s neck, splitting the head clean away from its shoulders. Ibuse’s fist followed through, launching it several feet away. By making contact with the head and only the head at the moment he stopped time, it moved in stopped time whereas the rest of the body didn’t! The creature’s body flopped forward and hit the ground with a thud, disintegrating away into that accursed, blackened ash.

“Still feels like murder,” Ibuse grimaced, shaking out his fist from the impact. “Not a fan. I’ll stick to asking questions first.”

Another few Rejected came at him swinging. Ibuse skated a safe distance away on those electric arcs that danced from his feet. He’d eliminated one, but that had hardly made a dent. He’d need at least thirty of himself to actually make any reasonable difference. That thought bounced around in his head for a good second before he made the right association. Once that happened, he hit himself. No, not thirty copies of himself: he’d just need to go through that again, thirty times more!

A quick glance down at his watch, and Ibuse chose his next target at random. Fear held no power over him now, even in the face of just monstrosities. He bolted right at it. Three other Rejected launched themselves into his path, swinging violently. He could feel their psychic signatures, pulsating maddeningly. Their distorted mouths loosed the most ungodly screams.

None could react to him opening the door, however. Teleporting between each one, Ibuse let the Even Flow overtake all rational thought. Channelling that restricted energy into his fist, his powerful right hook drove brutal Time Fractures into each of their heads. The same result as before; just as horrible. Ibuse felt himself retch with every senseless decapitation, but at least it wasn’t bloody. His duty quelled his gut, and he kept fighting. Once he’d cleared out the four Rejected in front of him, he looked at his watch. That had taken fifteen seconds overall.

Open The Door

開門 Kaimon

The door opened at his original position in the centre of the ring. Falling back through the parting golden screens and into the corridor, Ibuse ran fifteen seconds into the past, then back out. To his delight, he saw himself from fifteen seconds previous running towards that first group. That guy had it handled. Ibuse nodded at himself, proud, and charged in a different direction. With each pass, more and more Rejected fell at the many hands of the Ibuse cavalcade. Every single one died instantly, not a moment more spent in suffering. Ibuse didn’t think himself any kind of saviour. He only felt sorry for them. A life beyond death spent in agony was a torture no creature, human or otherwise, should ever experience. A blow to the head desynced the creature’s overrun Eye from the rest of the body: fatality.

On the final pass, no less than thirty two separate Ibuses swarmed out from that singular point. They charged forth with blazing fists and the naive righteousness of a man only wishing to do his best. Each took out two to three Rejected, delivering brutal Time Fractures to their heads, before vanishing into thin air. A great release consumed the air; the world itself seemed to sigh. The cold midwinter wind swept across the street, kicking the mounds of Rejected dust into the air, and bit at Ibuse’s exposed skin. The man buried his neck into the collar of his coat. Without the Rejected’s awful screeches obliterating his eardrums from every direction, for the first time since he’d arrived in this apocalyptic-seeming future, everything felt cold, empty.

Time stopped. Ibuse had grown so accustomed to the door opening behind him, the magnificent golden design engraved into the sliding screens didn’t even faze him anymore.

The air stunk of death. Ibuse shivered, a primal fear coursing like ice through his veins.

He didn’t like it here.

He was going home.