Wow, this story already took off with flying colors! We would like to thank everyone so very much for welcoming us back with open arms. (Although, isn't it a bit strange that WFT got six times the number of views of AGW this week? Not like we're complaining or anything. WFT was a great story; nothing wrong with more people loving it.)
Special thanks to MidnightRain101 who has become our newest regular! Every time you review, the things you say make us sooooooo happy!
Yes, mst88, Hotaru is yours. And that was an amazing compliment to our writing!
Mrs.1DJessup, your excitement is contagious. Thank you for following us here from WFT.
Also thanks to GoRA for creating our poor, grumpy child Fushimi. On with it then!
Accustomed to dealing with the seemingly unbelievable abilities of the enabled persons they encountered on a regular basis, Fushimi was far from caught off guard by the disappearing act. Nor did he truly believe the strain was gone. Instant transportation and warping of the space continuum were still rather unlikely compared to being invisible as far as superpowers were concerned. The strain was undoubtedly still there but using some method of altering perceptions to remain hidden.
This being Fushimi's determination, he glanced carefully around for any tell tale signs of the target's location. He missed not a single detail, examining closely even rear-view mirrors of the cars parked there. Even someone invisible could not move around without causing an effect on the environment—the crinkle of trash, a slight fluctuation of a shadow, a breeze of motion, etc. Fushimi searched high and low to find this indication, but it was when he turned his eyes upward that the situation changed again.
The boy reappeared exactly where he was before, which baffled the agent of justice. Why hadn't it tried to escape during that time? He worked through the thought in his mind and concluded, unless it couldn't. Determining why would have to be the next step. He wasn't going to miss his chance to catch the culprit because of wasting time, though. Leaving reflection for a later time, he took a few quick steps and lunged in with a saber engulfed in blue aura.
Flickering just slightly, the strain was instantly a hand's breadth father away than Fushimi had anticipated. That was a simple trick to overcome, and with a flick of his wrist, the swordsman sliced at a new angle. This one passed straight through the slender boy, but he only cocked his head further to the left. Then, sputtering like a projection, the sky haired boy dissolved. Fushimi felt a stabbing pain shoot through his eyes, causing them to squint closed tightly. When he opened them again, there were fourteen scraggly boys with sky blue hair shimmering in a circle around him.
The clansman took a step back to reassess the situation. As it turned out, the powers at play here were not something quite so simple as "Invisibility" or "Vanishing." Nor did it appear to be a mere illusion of duplicating oneself. After all, fourteen boys had appeared, each with a slightly different position, as if they were actually separate people. He recalled to mind, then, what Awashima had stated earlier, warning them that there was only "a" strain. Now he understood how a single opponent could certainly seem to be many.
Furthermore, every one of them had taken aim at him with some advanced technological form of a sling shot. The weapon itself was hardly intimidating, but the projectile appeared to be particularly sharp compared to the typical pebble. It was probably laced with a toxin also. Each unique version of the strain prepared to shoot from a different angle. Some were high, others low, far to the side, or dead center. Dodging one path would lead him right into another so that there was no way to avoid all the shots. That meant he had to determine which was the real culprit.
A young voice laughed, and it seemed to come from all directions. "You think you trapped me here, but joke's on you; I do best one-on-one."
Fushimi tried his best to track the bouncing voice down to an original source with no success while grumbling to himself, "Some one-on-one this is."
On the other hand, maybe it didn't matter which one was real. He had five throwing knives with him. Quickly he tried to calculate how far one slash with his sword could reach. Could he take all fourteen of them in two motions? He could make two moves before the kid shot. That was most likely his best option.
Three knives lodged into the ones on his right, since that was the most he could throw at one time. Simultaneously, a wide arc of blue sliced through four. While doing that, he whipped the remaining two blades from his sleeve and proceeded clockwise. Another swing of the saber accompanied those two, completing the second attack. Thirteen had been reached by the powerful aura of Scepter 4, and each of them had dissipated. Concluding that by pure, dumb luck the final, ratty haired boy had been the real one, he extended a hand to restrain him.
That boy did not look frightened or as if his plan had been undone so easily by a single hand. In fact, he didn't falter in the slightest. The fingers that had pulled the sling shot taut released, directed straight toward Fushimi's face. A split second later, he felt something small and hard bury itself in the side of his chest.
Wincing, he staggered forward and slashed out at the remaining boy. That body also dissolved into the air, leaving Fushimi alone with no real strain, but having clearly been hit by one. He reached under his right arm and yanked the protrusion out with a slight grimace. Thankfully, the sharp object had only pierced his muscle instead of his lung. As he threw it to the ground, he turned in the direction from which it had come, sword in hand. Again, no one was there. There was, however, the strain directly opposite it.
Something about all the different angles reminded him of the mirror he had acquired examining that rooftop earlier. Was he dealing with reflections? Or was the target somehow distorting space like that stray, Black Dog? Guessing he could easily prove or rule out the former, the Scepter 4 officer lunged toward the blank space which might logically be the source of a reflection.
Just as steel was about to contact either nothing or a transparent substance, the area for which he was aiming took shape. A feminine figure clad in blue appeared in horizontal wisps. Immediately knowing that was the uniform of a Scepter 4 agent, Fushimi diverted his blade. He clicked his tongue. What was that burgundy haired girl from the Intelligence Division doing, standing in his way with a periodic flicker? She had almost gotten killed. Even now, he couldn't tell her actual location, or how the strain had captured her image.
Waving a hand through the dematerialized body, he at least verified that wasn't a real blue clansman. The amount of time wasted on that, however, allowed the strain incredible range of motion. He tried to cautiously slip away while shooting another projectile from his sling. Fushimi heard the whiz of displaced air, and dodged out of its way nearly in time. He could not escape receiving a shallow scratch on the cheek.
At that moment, Fushimi felt a hand against his back. He whirled around, sword at the ready, to face the new threat. Framed eyes that were prepared to kill met with a high-tech pair of plastic, safety glasses. Her blue uniform and red hair were the same he had seen only the moment before, causing him to pull back barely in time.
"Fata Morgana," the girl spoke while he was still adjusting.
Dumbfounded by the abruptness of it all, Fushimi only replied, "Hah?"
"He's a complex form of superior mirage."
"I know what you said," he snapped back. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"You need my help," she stated with a level of assurance that didn't match her small stature or weak arms.
His mind centered in, not on the person before him, but rather on the dossier he had viewed that morning, straight to the field, "Sword Training: N/A." How on Earth could she possibly help him? Clicking his tongue as if irritated by her statement, he walked toward the exit of the parking lot, leaving her to fumble with her safety glasses. That distraction had cost them precious time, and the strain was likely to have come close to his escape by then. Fushimi had yet to uncover his location even a single time, and that girl thinking she could do better pricked at the back of his mind like an insect bite that itched ceaselessly.
Scooping up a few of his worthlessly thrown daggers on the way, he focused his eyes on the car nearest to the exit. That blue-haired gremlin was most likely to be hiding there. Hearing the whoosh of another projectile being shot, Fushimi swung his sword in a 270° arc to form a fire-like border of blue around him which rose into the air like a shield. He could have sworn he thought he saw it coming from his peripheral vision to the right, but he had learned his lesson that it may not come from where it appeared.
Spotting the pointy object as it deflected off his aura, he immediately aimed to return his own attack to where he presumed it had come from. Just as he was releasing one of his throwing knives filled with blue flames, someone crashed into him from the side, causing the trajectory of his weapon to divert into an unknown civilian's vehicle. As it exploded, raising a plume of smoke into the air, Fushimi turned with an angry glare.
"Oi, watch it," he ordered grumpily.
Below him the lab tech stared down at her tablet, performing calculations with the backside of a Sentai member's styled pen while she walked instead of looking at what came next. After mumbling to herself the final steps of her high-level, physics equation, Hotaru looked around at the environment to perceive what had happened while she was in her own world.
Rather than give any sort of apology or excuse, she simply pointed out, "You never would have hit the strain with that aim."
Frustrated by her interference and arrogant attitude, Fushimi clenched his hands around the hilt of his sword and knives and growled, "Is that so?"
Without any doubt, she replied uninhibitedly, "Yeah. According to the calculations, he is on that roof." She indicated the building behind the rising flames.
There in the wavering light waves, distorted by patches of overheated air, flickered glimpses of an image. Like looking at one's reflection in a clear pond, an underfed boy rippled in the air, scraggly blue hair blown upward by streams of unnatural warmth. Clearly, the vision only appeared because of the car fire, but the strain revealed no trace of waning confidence. This caused Fushimi to doubt his coworker's deduction.
"That's just another of his illusions."
Right away Hotaru corrected him, "Mirage, not illusion. A mirage specifically refers to the changes experienced by light waves whenever there is a variation of atmospheric temperature. An illusion is anything that fools the imagination. He is not toying with your mind. A mirage is a physical phenomenon not-"
"You can end the lecture now, Physics," Fushimi interrupted, not at all interested in being reinformed on a subject he likely understood better than her.
The strain had quickly concealed what they had seen in the flames moments before. That could mean he was fleeing to hide his own presence, or simply another intangible image. As the third-in-command of the government organization in charge of handling this type of event, Fushimi felt unusually ill-equipped to tell the difference. The same could not be said of the female officer.
Worked up by his passively rude insult, she snapped another intellectual explanation, "If you'd just listen, we could work together on this. Now, based on current atmospheric conditions and where the previous Fata Morgana were located, my math puts him at an elevated position-"
Again her superior didn't feel like listening. "Cut to the chase."
"It's Math. Math doesn't lie. He's up there."
Just because he didn't like her, he replied, "Maybe you did it wrong." Even so, he started preparing as if to make an attack on the roof.
Despite his deliberately demeaning statement, Hotaru did not step down. As he pulled out a larger knife from inside his uniform that he did not often use, she tried a different approach. She removed her safety goggles and held them out in front of him.
"I can see him. There's a setting in the glasses that compensates for the distortion of the light waves."
In response to the sudden invasion of his personal space for the third time, Fushimi shoved her away from himself and didn't make eye contact. Still, he eventually questioned, "You're sure he's there?"
"Like 97% sure."
Upon receiving confirmation, Fushimi released the blade that had been held up in his hand. It soared straight to an exterior electrical panel near the upper corner. Sparks flew as the circuit overloaded, taking out the power for the whole building. More importantly, the aura he had contained within the knife burst forth, spreading the blue power through the wires into the walls. Every few seconds the aura lit a small explosion in series until the whole top floor of the apartments collapsed.
Losing composure as the roof started to crack and crumble beneath him, the strain could no longer maintain the mirage that kept him hidden. He concluded the only chance he had left was to jump and try to outrun the Scepter 4 agents. However, Fushimi had already predicted the path he was most likely to follow and rushed to cut off the young teenager. Caught up in the excitement, Hotaru hurried to join them.
The blue haired strain scrambled to the open gate of the parking lot where he hid behind the longer legs of a young man who had just entered the vicinity. Both clansmen were startled initially, having been specifically instructed that there would be only one target. That would hardly cause them further trouble, though. Now that they were aware of the first one's powers, two would be just as simple to capture.
The saber, like an extension to his own arm, lithely swiped to the side as if warming up for the coming attack. He began to inform the two of their arrest while walking toward them, never noticing a sudden hesitation in his coworker.
"Holy grounds," she mumbled, unnoticed.
Quietly the newcomer urged the little urchin, "Get out of here, Kid Tut." The teen compliantly took to flight, but was soon halted by a small knife, glowing blue, which pinned the hem of his jacket to a wooden fence post. Simultaneously, Fushimi was prevented from advancing when a hand grabbed his shoulder. Once again, he spun toward the female lab tech with a glare as if to demand, Don't touch me.
Before he could complain a word, Hotaru repeated, "Your holy grounds."
Fushimi was well aware of the meaning of such terms. Once, members of the Special Forces had gotten carried away in their memories of their former comrade. That person had thrown himself in front of an attack meant for the king and had died because of it. What was his name again? Kusuhara. Even though the captain instructed each member about the unique reach of their own allotment of aura, it was Kusuhara who had spread the term into common vocabulary of the clan.
"Why?" She was apparently asking him to raise a shield, but against what? To switch to a defensive stance at that crucial moment would be pointless.
"Now!" She persisted.
Even though he had no obligation to take orders from her, he got the impression she was not about to allow him to act otherwise. Her gaze was firm and stubborn behind the mad scientist glasses. It would take too much time to argue. Concluding it would be easier to simply let his aura surround them in a protective shield and continue his attack from within, Fushimi gave in.
The blue began to ebb from his arms and legs, the tips of his weapons constantly by his side, the hem of his uniform, and the upturned collar of his shirt. Unlike the cool security typically associated with the order of the blue clan, this swirled around the two of them, raising from the ground in a somewhat ominous way before hardening into a structure that could only be likened to a Faraday cage. That was unusually tiresome, Fushimi barely admitted to himself about the effort it took to form something that was typically second-nature.
He turned back to their opponents in time to see the mirage successfully free himself from where he had been trapped. Still determined to complete their mission, he grit his teeth and imagined how he'd catch the strain again. Color shimmered through the blue shield. Pink and yellow traveled glowingly across the grid-like veins. It was abnormal, and the impression he got was that something invisible yet heavy pushed against him. Somehow his "holy grounds" were under attack, and he pushed back, straining to keep the shield in tact.
Whatever assaulted them came in waves, glistening rhythmically over the top and around the edges. "What the—?" Fushimi questioned, the edges of his words muffled by an unclear voice. The kid was gone, and his savior stood, without action, emotionless save for the subtle intensity in his eyes.
Hotaru answered descriptively, "Ionizing radiation. When I changed the setting on the safety glasses, I can clearly see an elevated neutron count and extremely high frequency wavelengths smaller than 0.03 nanometers. That's in the range associated with nuclear fission gamma rays. The readings indicate levels above the median lethal range of 450 roentgens, radiating from an epicenter near the location of the targeted strain's accomplice."
Under his breath, Fushimi muttered something inappropriate, since by the time her explanation was complete that person had already made his escape, bidding them a vulgar farewell with the gesture of only a single finger. Because of the lab tech's unwarranted interference, their mission had failed.
Even without the presence of any other being, Fushimi's holy grounds continued to pulsate, perhaps at a slowly diminishing rate. "Well, guess we have no choice but to wait out the half-life," the girl conceded yieldingly. She let out a sigh of disappointment and sank down to sit on the asphalt parking lot. Her legs were crossed in a way that showed brazen disregard for the indecency of her skirt, but she seemed far more annoyed than anything else, murmuring through calculations she performed on her tablet regarding their exposure levels and how long they might have to wait.
For his part, the disgruntled young man looked away with a click of his tongue. What a bothersome coworker... Shoving his free hand into a pocket, he made a call over the radio to Awashima. It would be at least 30 minutes before they could deploy the hazmat team.
Ah, sorry it was kind of a shorter chapter...but there really wasn't a better stopping point than that! Anyhow, a couple more chapters are already nearly finished, so look forward to hearing from us next week on Thursday-as scheduled. Always good to see we have friends.