The Igniter

by Reki Kawahara

  “I think I’m wrong, but I just want to make sure,” he said, unwrapping his arms from around Yumiko’s body and taking a deep breath.

  Minoru then held his breath and “pushed” against the pitch-black sphere in the middle of his chest.

  “What do you mean by ‘wr—’” Yumiko’s voice was suddenly cut off.

  The sound of the motorcycle engine, the sounds of the surrounding cars, and all of the other noise went silent. Minoru’s vision took on a slight blue tint. His hips and legs levitated slightly above the motorcycle. With his three-centimeter-thick defensive shell, Minoru was isolated from the world.

  Still, not much change could be seen from the outside. Even if the old man had been looking at Minoru, he probably wouldn’t have realized that Minoru wasn’t directly touching the seat of the motorcycle.

  But…

  A half second after Minoru activated his shell, the old man in the taxi leaped up and looked at Minoru from across the window. The sharp gaze Minoru felt from the man pierced both the window of the taxi and the faceplate of Minoru’s helmet, straight into his eyes. Minoru stared on, surprised, as he saw the expression on the old man’s face change from shock to that of a deep red intent to kill.

  Suddenly, the inside of Suka’s nostrils flamed up. There was a chemical smell so strong it felt as if it were going to burn away the scent-sensing cells of his nose.

  For a second, Suka thought that the taxi driver had sprayed him with pepper spray, but in the next instant he realized, with a shiver, what that smell meant.

  It was the scent of the black hunters. It was a signal that let him know that they had used their power. However, this was the first time he had ever felt so strong a scent. Even the time that that young girl had stabbed him in the stomach with a knife, the scent had not been this strong.

  For some reason the smell quickly disappeared, but he turned his head to look left, as if he were being sucked in. Right outside the window was a black motorcycle running alongside the taxi. The driver, in a black leather jumpsuit, was looking straight ahead at the road, but a passenger riding behind was looking straight at him. Because of the helmet’s faceplate, he could not see the passenger’s face, but Suka was certain it was him.

  It’s that one. There’s a black hunter just a meter away from me, using some power of his to capture his prey…, Suka thought.

  A hatred he could not control welled up from his stomach, and Suka clenched his teeth together, bringing wrinkles to his nose.

  Immediately afterward, Suka realized his mistake.

  The one riding the motorcycle must have activated his power to test Suka’s reaction. Feeling something strange about the fact that Suka was using an oxygen canister, he must have revealed his scent to test if Suka was really a red Third Eye host.

  In other words, being surprised at the smell, looking left, and expressing his hatred had been a threefold mistake.

  Suka’s hatred mixed with humiliation and transformed into an overwhelming rage.

  I’ll kill him, no matter what it takes, Suka thought.

  Transferring his oxygen canister to his left hand, Suka raised his right hand toward the motorcycle.

  The moment Minoru saw the face of an old man who he guessed might be in his sixties, something in his memory tingled, but he didn’t have the time to figure out why. The old man had raised his right hand, bending his five fingers into a claw. The middle of his palm split open horizontally to show a crimson sphere.

  The sphere, which looked like a living eye, gave off a light the color of blood. Suppressing an instinctive desire to hide away in his shell, Minoru deactivated his power. Given that their prior conversation was cut off, it seemed that Minoru’s shell cut off the wireless communication of the intercom as well. With his shell activated, he could not communicate with Yumiko.

  The moment he sunk back into his seat on the motorcycle, he yelled in a hoarse voice, “Igniter is in the taxi to our right! We’re going to be attacked!”

  “…!!”

  Minoru heard a sharp intake of air over the intercom. Immediately afterward, Minoru felt a rush of air from his right side, flowing left. It wasn’t that strong of a wind, but it took away Minoru’s breath. Flustered, Minoru tried to breathe in deeply, but the pain in his chest would not go away.

  The air was thin.

  This was Igniter’s oxygen deprivation attack. It was likely that oxygen that Minoru and Yumiko should be breathing was being collected in a place away from the motorcycle.

  Minoru’s lungs hurt as if they were being wrung out by something. The scene in front of Minoru’s eyes grew dark. Minoru thought to breathe through the compressed air canister, but then realized that the canister he had been given by Professor Riri Isa was still in the motorcycle’s trunk compartment.

  I’ll just reactivate my defensive shell, thought Minoru as he gasped for air. He didn’t understand why, but he never lacked oxygen inside his shell. In other words, he should be able to defend against Igniter’s oxygen deprivation attack.

  But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t breathe. In order to activate his protective barrier, he needed to fill his lungs with air and hold his breath. But right now, it felt as if something was caught in his throat, and no matter how he tried to breathe in, his lungs wouldn’t respond.

  …This…might be a problem, thought Minoru dizzily, as if he were thinking about someone else. Minoru’s black Third Eye beat firmly against his ribs.

  I wonder if it will eject itself, thought Minoru. Realizing that its host was about to die, maybe it would return to the sky, just like how the Third Eye leaped from Biter’s corpse in the Saitama Super Arena underground parking lot.

  At that moment…

  “We’re going to jump! Hold on!” came a voice screaming over the intercom, which brought Minoru back to his senses. With all of his remaining strength, he gripped onto Yumiko’s body.

  Perhaps due to the lack of oxygen, the motorcycle’s engine had been whining, but it now suddenly roared a bestial roar.

  An intense force traveled from the engine through the chain to the rear wheel and then to the street. Due to the counter torque, or a reactive moment of force in the opposite direction of the rear wheel, the front wheel rose in the air. Yumiko used her power to take that diagonally upward acceleration and amplify it.

  Ka-boom!

  With a crashing sound, the bike with its two riders leaped into the air at a ferocious speed, and the deep red evening sky spread out through Minoru’s clouded vision.

  They shouldn’t have been able to escape, thought Suka.

  He had moved the oxygen around the two black hunters a full ten meters away from them. Suka expected both the rider and passenger to immediately faint after they breathed in oxygen-deprived air.

  Really, Suka wanted to aim for the motorcycle’s engine. Inside the internal combustion engine, gasoline aerosol was constantly being burned. Even an elementary school student would be able to tell a person what would happen if he concentrated oxygen in that spot.

  But unfortunately, the motorcycle was too close. If he caused the engine to explode, the taxi Suka was riding in would not escape unscathed. In the worst-case scenario, a scrap of the motorcycle could come flying through the glass window into the taxi. Therefore, as a second-best option, he had attacked by depriving them of oxygen, but…

  “Wha…?!” said Suka in surprise, loosening the grip of his right hand.

  The large motorcycle, which should have been caught in the oxygen-deprived area, suddenly pulled a flashy wheelie and then shot up diagonally into the air like an antiaircraft missile.

  That was probably due to the power of the one who stabbed him deep in the stomach, Suka thought. The driver wearing the black jumpsuit must have been her.

  The frustration at letting his mortal enemy get away burned in the pit of his stomach, but that feeling only lasted an instant. It was not yet time to fight them. He had already prepared a proper stage for that battle somewhere else. It was importan
t that he acted his age and moved forward with composure.

  With the mask for his oxygen canister still pressed against his face with his left hand, Suka gave instructions to the taxi driver. “Stop the car at that intersection over there,” he said.

  However, the driver, still with a cigarette in his mouth, stretched his neck over the steering wheel and looked up at the sky from the front windshield.

  “Did you see that, old man?! That motorcycle just flew into the air! Are they filming some sort of stunt?!”

  It wouldn’t have been unusual if the lack of oxygen in the surrounding air had affected the driver, but he had shut the window and seemed to have escaped the effect. Holding back his irritation, Suka repeated his instruction.

  “I don’t care. Stop the car,” he said.

  “All right, all right,” replied the taxi driver, turning on his hazard lights and parking on the side of the road. As he was messing with the taximeter, he opened his mouth again. “Plus, didn’t you give that motorcycle a signal or something a second ago, old man? Are you an actor or something?!” he said in a loud voice.

  “…” Suka paused. You really just said too much, didn’t you, young one? he thought.

  Putting his oxygen canister back in his bag, Suka stretched out his right hand and gripped the taxi driver’s oily neck from behind.

  Snap.

  By only applying a fraction of his strength, Suka had pulverized the bones of the man’s neck. To Suka’s right hand, which he had strengthened and refined during his training in the mountains, human bone was nothing more than Styrofoam.

  With only his right hand, Suka moved the slumped body of the driver into the passenger’s seat and stepped out of the taxi. He went around to the driver’s seat and got back in. After shoving the corpse down into the foot space of the passenger’s seat, he set the taxi’s sign to OUT OF SERVICE and started driving off.

  As he struggled with the pain in his chest, Minoru was conscious of the fact that the motorcycle had leaped, no, soared, into the air.

  Amplifying the acceleration of the motorcycle in a diagonally upward direction, Yumiko had caused it to lift off from the ground. It was an extreme use of her power, but at the same time it was probably the only way to have escaped the situation.

  Even so, just how are we going to land? Minoru thought.

  The motorcycle was coasting more than thirty meters up in the air. Obviously, there was no road beneath the wheels. They shouldn’t be able to accelerate or decelerate any more.

  However, Yumiko’s body continued to support Minoru without flinching, even as Minoru was starting to lose consciousness.

  Immediately afterward, the motorcycle reached its peak in flight and began to fall. If they ran into a building from this height, not only the bike, but also even as Third Eye hosts they were sure to take a massive amount of damage.

  There was no way that Minoru alone could escape to the safety of his defensive shell, and even if he tried, he wasn’t sure he could use his power as he was starting to lose consciousness.

  In the direction of their fall, there were several low buildings with green-painted roofs. One of those they were approaching at a fast pace. Minoru thought that they were going to crash into that building in a matter of seconds, but his prediction turned out to be wrong.

  The instant before they had reached the long rectangular building, the motorcycle immediately slowed its descent, as if it had deployed a parachute in midair.

  They continued to approach the concrete rooftop, and both wheels landed at about the same time.

  The deeply sinking suspension groaned as it absorbed the shock. Then, as the brakes were deployed, sparks leaped from the rotors as the motorcycle stopped in the center of the roof.

  It seemed they’d escaped falling to their deaths, but why did their speed immediately drop in midair? Minoru wondered for a bit and then suddenly realized.

  As the motorcycle fell, there was a drop in speed caused by air resistance, and a decrease in speed implies a negative acceleration, which naturally was the same in nature as a positive acceleration. Yumiko probably amplified that deceleration in order to brake the bike midair.

  Accelerator…what an astounding power…, Minoru thought as he felt his consciousness quickly fall away from himself.

  Minoru only hazily felt how he slipped from the rear seat of the motorcycle and tumbled onto the concrete roof.

  “…!!” Yumiko screamed something Minoru could not quite hear, rushed over, and pulled up the lower half of his body. After yanking off his helmet, Yumiko pulled the small mouthpiece popping out from the neck of her jumpsuit and stuck it into Minoru’s mouth.

  “…the! Breathe!!” she shouted, and Minoru tried to follow her instructions, but his lungs no longer responded. It was as if hot glue had been washed down his windpipe and into his lungs, hardening over his entire respiratory system. Minoru’s vision grew darker with every second, and he could feel his Third Eye throb deep within his chest.

  Is this an…emotion? Is it…anger? Or…sadness?

  The mouthpiece was suddenly taken out of his mouth.

  Yumiko put it into hers and bent backward, breathing in deep. She then spit out the mouthpiece, and without a moment’s hesitation, she locked lips with Minoru. After securing the airway and holding Minoru’s nose, she vigorously exhaled. The oxygen-rich gas wrenched open his windpipe and flowed into his lungs.

  Yumiko pulled her face back and put the mouthpiece in her mouth again. She took another deep breath of the high-oxygen-content-enriched air that Professor Riri had procured for them and transferred it again into Minoru’s mouth.

  Unable to think about anything at all, his body frantically devoured the oxygen that was given to him. As the burning pain in his lungs was washed away, the throbbing of his Third Eye that had felt as if it were going to explode quickly subsided.

  “…hn…! Kugh…!!”

  With a cough, Minoru’s lungs finally began to work on their own.

  Yumiko looked directly into Minoru eyes and shouted, “Can you breathe?! Can you breathe on your own now?!”

  “Y… Ye-yes…,” said Minoru in a raspy voice.

  At that moment, Minoru felt something warm and wet dripping onto his cheek. It took a few moments for him to realize that it was Yumiko’s tears. Yumiko seemed to be surprised by her own tears as well and pulled back. She wiped her eyes several times on the sleeve of her jumpsuit, but eventually she gave up, turning her back to Minoru and hunching over as her shoulders shook.

  Minoru couldn’t say anything, nor could he even get up, so he just continued to stare at her back.

  Only the clicking sound of the cooling motorcycle overlapped with Yumiko’s sobs.

  10

  As the old elevator opened noisily onto the fourth floor, Yumiko said, “I’m going to stop by my room,” and walked out. The door then closed, and the elevator continued to ascend.

  It had been three days since Minoru visited SFD Headquarters, but the fifth floor welcomed Minoru as before with its wide expanse. There was still a lingering bit of red light from the sky that shone in through the windows on the south side. Minoru thought it strange that even on his second visit he had arrived at around the same time.

  Minoru had left school at 3:55 p.m. He and Tomomi Minowa parted ways on the road by the irrigation stream at 4:20 p.m. Immediately afterward, he was picked up by Yumiko on her motorcycle, and they arrived at Ikebukuro at 4:30 p.m. They then approached Igniter, but due to Minoru’s negligence let him get away, and Professor Riri gave the order to retreat to headquarters. Everything had happened in the course of an hour.

  …Not to mention that I almost died from Igniter’s oxygen-deprivation attack and was saved by Yumiko…, Minoru thought. Even after he stepped out of the elevator, he stood in front of the doors, mulling over that fact.

  Yumiko was still on the fourth floor, and Minoru didn’t see Riri or DD when he looked around the room.

  Instead, in front of the large TV, sitting
hunched over, was someone he had not seen before. From what he could see, it was a male and probably a high school student. He was wearing a blazer that had the same color scheme as Yumiko’s. He had large headphones on his head and was holding a game controller in both hands.

  Minoru ventured over, wondering if he should say something. The TV screen entered his view. On the screen was an early RPG-type video game for a system that had come out long before Minoru was even born. Because the resolution of the game was only a few hundred dots in either direction and it was displayed on a sixty-five-inch LCD screen, every pixel was ridiculously big.

  Minoru watched on silently as the protagonist’s party on the right attacked with simple pastoral animations. It reminded him of the handheld games he used to play together with his sister Wakaba before the incident. Even though those were of a far higher resolution, he thought that even the kind of game being played in front of him might be entertaining in its own way.

  After the protagonist’s party easily disposed of the monsters and the screen returned to the field, the game was paused.

  The male high school student, who was sitting cross-legged on a cushion, leaned back onto the floor and looked up, with controller still in hand, upside down at Minoru. After a smirk, he lifted himself and sprang to his feet smoothly without using his hands and turned toward Minoru.

  When they faced each other, the high school student was about three centimeters taller than Minoru. He had longish wavy brown hair, and below his bangs were blue plastic-framed glasses. The irises of his eyes behind his glasses were large and well proportioned, the bridge of his nose was high, and the outlines of his face were both sharp and stylish. No matter how you looked at him, he certainly didn’t look very Japanese.

  In part because of his unaffected smile, Minoru was just able to step forward and introduce himself.

  “Um… It’s nice to meet you. I’m Utsugi. I just joined the SFD a few days ago,” Minoru said.