by Brandon Chen
Keimaro took a few steps backward at the sight of Yuri’s transformation, his heart thudding rapidly against his chest. It reminded him of the beast that he had saved Aika from four years earlier, except Yuri seemed to have full control over himself. He was intelligent despite his enhanced strength and speed in this new form. Keimaro sucked in a deep breath of air, exhaling through his nose in an attempt to calm his nerves. Being afraid was only going to mess with his head. He could not allow himself to succumb to fear. “Huh, looks like I was right about you being a mutt, then.”
“Enough.”
The voice came from behind Keimaro, who glanced over his shoulder to see a middle-aged man standing there with spiky, red hair. His hair was extremely long and slicked backward, as sharp as daggers. He wore a black cloak that was wrapped tightly around himself, and he sighed as he began to walk forward past Yuri’s friends, who had gotten up and were recovering from their wounds. It was that same man that Keimaro had seen earlier in the day standing at the mansion’s doorstep.
Keimaro lowered his sword at the sight of the man and turned to face him, sensing that Yuri was drawing back. “Who are you?”
“My name is Z,” the man said with a small smile before he looked at the singed grass and destroyed lawn and slapped his forehead with frustration. “My, my, Yuri! He is our guest! Why did you have to confront him in such a way?”
“The punk asked for it.” Yuri snarled, not taking his eyes off of Keimaro.
“You want round two, dog-breath?” Keimaro snapped.
“Round one isn’t over until you’re done breathing, Hayashi scum,” Yuri retorted.
Z watched the two of them bicker for a moment. He tried to speak up, but their words overlapped his. Z raised his eyebrow at their rudeness. Then he snapped his fingers and conjured a giant red hammer into his hands. He gripped the handle tightly and began to swing it, red light streaming behind the head of the hammer. The hammer slammed into both boys with a single swing and sent them flying backward, skidding along the ground.
Keimaro rolled across the lawn and landed on his back. The blow hadn’t really hurt as much as it had confused him. He was dazed, not sure what had just happened. His vision was blurred white, but nothing really hurt except for his head. He leaned forward, rubbing his forehead, and something smacked onto his chest. He glanced down, and his heart thudded when he saw it was an odd, slimy, green substance that was moving abnormally around his body.
“Eh?” he exclaimed, beginning to struggle, but the odd substance curled around him, expanding until it had covered his entire body. The boy watched as the red-haired man snapped his fingers once more and the green substance solidified, trapping Keimaro completely so that he was incapable of moving. “Tch, stop your tricks, old man!” he snarled, attempting to break the foreign solid, but it was just like the substance that the man with the glasses had used.
“Old man? I hardly look old.”
“But you are old,” Yuri muttered, stuck in the same situation as Keimaro, though he seemed much more calm. He leaned back so that he was lying on the soft grass, apparently getting settled in since he seemed to know they would be there for a while.
“Shut up, Yuri,” Z said with a scoff and put his hands in his pockets, giving Keimaro a look of reassurance. “Don’t worry; we aren’t here to hurt you. Actually, we just wanted to get your attention and to see if you were the real thing. The walls of my mansion are fortified with a gigantic ward so that no one can get through. In fact, most people can’t even see my house.”
“Huh?” Keimaro muttered. Looks like Gavin’s rumor was true.
“You see,” Z explained, “when one looks at the gateway of my mansion, one sees only the gates to an abandoned, eerie, old warehouse. In fact, the rumor around here is that it’s haunted. No one dares to come near it. You must’ve seen people with shifty eyes when you were walking close to it, right? It isn’t exactly the liveliest place from a distance. You can’t see anyone who is walking inside of the ward either. The gate itself is impenetrable by most humans. But I remember you from earlier today. You walked by, and we locked eyes. You saw me. That’s when I knew that you had arrived in Bassada. So, I sent Yuri to go and fetch you. Instead, he brought back your friend as bait so you would come to us. We want to offer you a proposition.”
“I don’t want to make a damn deal with any of you people. I have my own goals and—”
“We have the same goals,” Z said with a chuckle, “the destruction of this corrupt government, the assassination of the king, and the eradication of the Bount organization. You hate them as much as we do, correct?” He looked Keimaro in the eyes now with his smile wiped clean off his face. His eyes were deprived of their former cheer, which had been replaced with apathy and seriousness.
Keimaro stared at Z for a moment, gulping. Who were these guys? They hated the Bount organization? They all had weird magical powers, too, just like him. Were they former Bount members? No, maybe they were Bount organization members who were trying to bait him! He couldn’t be sure if these guys were for real. But, when he looked around, he found his answer. He saw Yuri’s head lower at the very mention of the Bounts. The girl with the rifle had looked away and was tightening her grip on her weapon. The man with the glasses was touching her shoulder.
“No.” A look of surprise came across Z’s face, but Keimaro spoke once more. “I hate them much more than any of you ever could.”
The smile returned to Z’s face, and he nodded. “We are a resistance group that has formed against the Bount organization. Yuri here is the first person to ever kill a member of the Bount organization, the strongest terrorist group in the entire world. They contain men and women with capabilities beyond human comprehension, and they have mastered their abilities to the point where they are able to shift continents, change nature, destroy armies, and obliterate nations. Three Bounts have been assigned to this city, which is why we are here to hunt them down. We come to you today because we are sure that you recognize their names: Tobimaru Hayashi, Hidan, and Junko.”
Keimaro’s ears pricked up at the very sound of their names. He despised all of them so much. No one would understand. They had taken everything from him. He had sworn that he would destroy them all. Mai was probably dead after all of these years; he hadn’t seen her or even heard a single mention of her existence since that day. His eyes were glowing a bright red, and flames were beginning to flicker around his shoulders. “Yeah, I know them. And I’m going to be the one to kill them. I’ll crush them with my own two hands. I don’t need your help with anything, old man.”
“Stop calling me old. And how is your disguise as a member of the Royal Guard? Soon the Bounts will be forming a plan with the king of Bassada, and they will be working to end all freedom on the continent. Humans will be ruled underneath the Bounts. They’ll gain power politically, and soon an army will be at their disposal. Is that what you want?”
“I’ll stop them before—”
“You were hardly able to fend off Yuri in his human form!” Z snapped. “And you believe that you can handle three full-fledged Bount members and a whole empire by yourself? Don’t be such a loner, Keimaro. You have your goals, correct? I recall them being to get your revenge on Faar, kill the Bounts, and save a particular someone. Your little sister, right?”
Keimaro’s eyes widened at the mention of Mai, and the flames intensified, beginning to spread outward. “How the hell do you know about Mai? You know where she is, don’t you? You sick—” A glob of green substance smacked across his mouth and solidified instantly. He tried to speak, but it came out muffled.
Z smiled at Keimaro and winked. “That’s much better. You believed that your sister was dead this whole time without even proof? My, my, sounds as if you’re giving up on a member of your own family. How pessimistic. She’s alive. The Bounts intend to use her for something that is unknown. My group will be the ones to confront the Bounts and the king. You can either be a part of our operations or sit back and watch u
s fight the battles that you want to be involved in. Fight with us. In return, we will ensure your sister’s safe return.”
Keimaro’s breathing slowed, and he began to calm down. Her safe return? She was alive. All of this time, she had been okay. He wondered what she looked like after all of these years. She was eight now, wasn’t she? These people seemed strong. He wasn’t in a particularly good situation to go against them either. Gavin was unconscious, Yata was captured, and he was stuck surrounded by people who could quite easily defeat him. Looks like it’s not just me and Yata anymore.
The flames began to die down around him, and he closed his eyes. The green material vanished as if it had disintegrated into thin air. He looked up at Z and worked his jaw. “I’ll work with you on the condition that I am the one who gets to kill Junko.”
Z smiled. “Of course.”
“Where is Yata?”
“Unconscious inside the mansion. We will provide you with training—”
“I don’t need training,”
“Straight to it then? We will go over the plan soon. Can you walk?”
“I’m not hurt,” Keimaro said, pushing himself to his feet. He swayed, wincing at the sharp pain in his ribs. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest a bit.
Z extended his hand to the girl and boy at his side. “This here young lady is Lena. She is an expert with the rifle, explosives, and technological advances. She studied amongst gnome engineers for most of her life. She’s quite good with hand-to-hand combat as well and doesn’t have any magical capabilities. But, she makes up for it with her talent and hard work.”
Keimaro nodded his head and blinked a few times, his face turning red. “Uh, sorry for … hitting you with fire earlier, Lena,” he said, holding out his hand in the attempt at a handshake. He didn’t expect her to shake it—and, of course, she didn’t.
“I’ll make you pay for it later,” Lena snapped, one hand on her hip as the other brushed some ashes from her shoulder.
“This is my son, Noah. He is quite the smart kid, if I do say so myself. He is mastering the same type of magic that I do. Some call it bending; some call it conjuring. We create anything that we want out of thin air using the colors that we can see before us. If we see green, the conjured magic is green. It really depends on what we concentrate on. It’s quite a strong attack but focuses more on defense and utilization than offense, which was why you were able to easily defeat him. He needs to work on a few things in order to maximize his proficiency with this style of magic, but overall, I suppose, he’s all right.”
“Sorry for punching you in the face.”
“No, it’s completely understandable. We were enemies at the time, after all,” Noah said with a warm smile, adjusting his cracked glasses with a single poke at the lenses. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Likewise,” Keimaro lied.
“And this is Yuri. He is the king of a faraway city known as Horux and is, as you witnessed earlier, a werewolf. He is capable of transforming at will, and he has a few tricks up his sleeve in addition. He was the first person to kill a member of the Bount organization when they invaded Horux, just as they are doing to Bassada. You two will be working together.”
Keimaro and Yuri locked gazes for a moment, looking into the red glow of each other’s eyes, never having seen someone else like them. Immediately, they understood each other from a single glance: the pain, the hatred and anger mixed with agony that derived from memories of the past. They glanced away, and Keimaro watched as Noah began to walk toward Gavin’s unconscious body to pick him up.
Z nodded at Keimaro. “We will walk you to Yata. Meanwhile, I want to debrief you on how you will contribute to our revolution. A revolution doesn’t happen in one day. As lucky as you were to get your position as a member of the Royal Guard so easily, not everything will happen so smoothly.” He began to walk across the singed grass toward his mansion. “We have many assassins and willing warriors who all share a piece of our circle of hatred for the Bounts. But, in order to eliminate the threat of an entire army, we must first eliminate Faar. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” Keimaro said as they arrived at the door and began to walk in. The boy’s eyes widened when he saw the largest room possible in history, bigger than even the king’s throne room. The ceiling stretched higher than he had thought possible with floating candles that magically bounced about in the air, levitating. A winding stairway led to many different floors in the giant tower-like structure. The inside of the house was shaped more like a tower than the mansion it had looked like on the outside. Rooms were located on a platform that circled around the room, creating entire floors. This winding stairway consisted of only floating steps with two railings that spun around the structure, leading to the very top. Magic.
“I understand that you will be living in the castle for the time being, but you will surely have plenty of time at night to come and be here, correct? So, please, treat this place as you would your home,” Z said with a nod, walking forward through what seemed like crowds of people.
Keimaro saw literally hundreds of boys and girls, young and older, walking around everywhere, fitting inside of this mansion. Each of them is an assassin? he wondered. They all hated the Bount organization. How could this be? There were so many of them. Could the Bounts have affected this many people? He bumped into a few of them as he walked past and glanced at Z. “Where’s Yata?”
“He’s fine,” Z said and walked to the far side of the massive room, past many of the boys and girls. He stood on a large blue platform that seemed to be made of some type of glittering, soft, padded material and looked more like some kind of elevator than anything else. He waved his hand, indicating for Keimaro, Lena, and Yuri to follow. “Noah will take your friend to the infirmary. I’m assuming that your friend will be staying with us?”
“I suppose so,” Keimaro muttered, pushing past the crowds of people. He sighed, stepping onto the massive blue platform, which was large enough to fit dozens of people. He blinked a few times, not really sure what was going to happen on this platform. The only thing he was sure of was that he was going to be surprised. And, sure enough, he was.
As soon as Yuri and Lena were secured on the platform, there was a flash and Keimaro felt his body being ripped apart. Well, not exactly ripped, because that sounded too painful. It was more like being taken apart meticulously. After a single second of blackness, he found himself standing in a completely different room, which was much smaller. He looked down to see that he was still on the platform still, and then he blinked, looking around.
The room looked somewhat like an office with multiple red leather chairs and a long wooden desk covered with a map of Bassada. Colorful darts had been slammed down into the piece of parchment. He watched as Yuri and Lena calmly walked forward and sat down in the leather seats.
Lena glanced back over the chair at him and snapped, “Hey, stop standing there gawking. Get over here! We have business to attend!”
“Uh,” Keimaro said, still confused, scratching his neck. “How did I get here?”
Z had sat down in a large black leather chair on the other side of the desk. He had spun around to look out the window, which took up the entire wall on the far side of the room. It offered a beautiful view of a lush green plain with a few hills, surrounded by yet another wall. “You were standing on a teleporter. With the right coordinates, the platform can disassemble the particles in your body and reassemble them in a place where another teleporter marker is located.” He spun around in his chair and leaned his elbow on his desk with his chin against his palm. “You don’t understand how many trials it took to get that thing to work—and how many people died in order to test it. Gnome technology, cool, huh?”
Keimaro gulped. He didn’t like the thought of his body being taken apart and pieced back together. Though, the idea of a teleporter was rather interesting. He had never read anything about its existence and had always thought that such a contraption would be much more futuristi
c. He assumed that its invention hadn’t been publicized yet.
He walked forward, sat in a leather chair beside Lena, and sighed, leaning back into the seat. These guys have a lot of resources, it seems. Didn’t Gavin say that Z was one of the richest men in Bassada?
“Now,” Z said, tapping his hand on the map. “We are eager to get started with your cooperation, Keimaro. If you are willing, that is. You will be meeting up with Yata later on tonight. He is currently resting. But, I shall tell you our plan as well as what we know of the Bounts’ plan.”
Keimaro nodded. “I’ll cooperate.”
“Good,” Z said, leaning back into his chair and placing his hands on the arms. “Now, you are rather valuable to us. You are a member of the Hayashi clan and have one of the very rare magical abilities—the kind that are only given by a meteor, a foreign rock that falls from the sky. This rock originated from an outside source that isn’t from our planet. Only two have ever been recorded to hit the earth, and the creator of the Bount organization harnessed one of them.”
Keimaro frowned. Two had hit the planet in recorded history? Was Junko the one who harnessed the power, or was someone else the creator of the Bount organization? And what the hell was causing these meteors to hit the earth? Where did they get their own power?
“Other magic is known as artificial magic, which is given through potions that can be created only from components of certain animals, herbs, or even sometimes humanoids from different continents around the world. That is why few have obtained magic—it is either extremely expensive or very dangerous to obtain since one would have to journey around the world in order to get it. Mastering artificial magic is even harder since it isn’t natural, but your magic is by far the strongest. Unfortunately, it can also be the wildest and hardest to control, for it becomes a part of you.”
Keimaro slid his hands into his pockets. Artificial magic. So that would be what Noah and Z both have. Users of artificial magic have limits. But I don’t. Keimaro smiled. Perfect.