Three Kings

She couldn't see Misaki's fate clearly. But this wasn't an effect of her changed abilities after the slate's destruction.

In many things, shifts had happened. She could see more colour now, not just red. Very little, but enough for looking anew at familiar people, things and scenes. That tie Izumo liked to wear actually looked nice with his white shirts, Tatara's old camera had depths of colour in its surfaces that she was just noticing, and Neko's hair was so many wonderful shades of light.

She could now let stronger feelings out without causing harm to people around her as she had developed greater control over the reach of her emotions. But she also sensed that the effects of her emotions had weakened on their own, maybe because the slate was no more.

And she no longer needed to peer through her red marbles to see a person's inner truth. She could tell just through her own eyes. Mostly, she screened off her special vision so the impressions of fate in each person's life wouldn't flood her head and heart. Of course, whenever she did see something in someone, she almost never told that person, because most people did not take things with acceptance like Mikoto and Tatara. Many became fearful or too excited, and that sometimes changed their destiny again, often to something less happy.

But she'd looked at Misaki this morning, and looked again, because his future was suddenly unclear. Is my vision weakening? she had wondered. However, she'd seen Izumo, then Shouhei, with clarity. It was Misaki whose fate had become unsettled. Something had changed, and anything could happen, perhaps depending on what decisions he made.

That was what had made her so terrified for Misaki's life when the fight had started. Maybe that was why his future was unclear – she might lose him right now, forever… no, she couldn't let another person precious to her die in such a horrible way. And as her heart swelled and her emotions broke loose while she raced towards him, she felt it – she felt what the Silver king had mentioned during yesterday's meeting – the power that had once been concentrated in the slate in the air around her, floating loose, and she simply knew in her desperation to save Misaki that, yes, she could gather those scattered specks of power because she was a Strain who had also been a king, and she didn't know how to explain it even to herself, but she just knew how.

The man who wanted to kill Misaki had gone insane – she could tell as she dashed in front of him – perhaps only for now, because the madness wasn't deep inside his soul but making his brain sick. He did not see her as a child like most adults did, and she could not connect with his frenzied mind. She saw that he only viewed her as another being to destroy. But Anna wasn't afraid now. She knew how to do this. She focused, and pulled the power towards her, around her, into her, made it strong and packed it full of the loose specks, then stretched it out like she had stretched her Red wings – no, bigger than her wings – much bigger, so she could protect Misaki.

The long, sharp weapons had flown towards them, and slammed into the wall she had formed. Then Izumo and Shouhei and Saburouta had jumped on the madman and knocked him out. All the things the man had been controlling – pots and knives and large shards of glass – crashed to the ground once the blows to his head made him unconscious, and Anna had released the concentrated power she had gathered so that it returned to the world around her.

That was when she realised how frightened she had been for Misaki – her legs trembled as she tried to run towards him – his right arm was still nailed to the board by that horrible thing, and he was bleeding so much. Izumo was beside them now, checking quickly with his eyes that she was all right and at the same time trying to hold Misaki up by his left arm without hurting him.

Misaki was reaching for her with his left hand, which was torn and coated completely in blood dripping off his fingertips, and the red colour was so intense. She took it so, so carefully, to not hurt all the torn, gashed parts – and just stood there shaking while he cried and asked her hoarsely again and again why she had done that. "Don't ever put yourself between me and danger again! I won't want to live if you die!"

Izumo worked the skewer free of the board without pulling it out of Misaki in case it made him bleed more, and carefully helped him sit down on the ground. While Saburouta watched the madman to make sure he didn't wake up, Shouhei grabbed clean napkins from Inamoto's eatery and applied pressure to Misaki's wounds, taking care not to jolt the skewer in his arm. Then Izumo took out his phone and made an urgent call to Seri.

"Seri-chan," Anna heard him say in a tight, tense voice as he moved to a quieter corner away from the crowd of people gathering round, and Inamoto-san wailing that he never wanted anyone to get hurt. "Something's happened…"

Anna tried to re-summon the power she'd had only moments ago so she could do something to stop the bleeding… but even though she remembered how she had drawn it towards her, she was now unable to exert that pull. Her strength to do it appeared to have been in answer to her terror for his life, and it was as if that strength had gone back to sleep.

All she could do was keep Misaki's hand held up, as Shouhei told her to, and press the napkin over it, swallowing her tears because Misaki was already so upset with the danger she had put herself in. She and Shouhei kept him awake and alert until – she didn't know how long it was, but vehicles pulled up around them, and she heard the familiar rapid beat of boots racing across the tarmac. All at once, regular police officers were moving the bystanders away from the area while Misaki was helped by Blue clansmen and an emergency medical team which had arrived in an ambulance.

Seri was talking to Izumo while directing two of her fellow clansmen, and a woman who appeared to be a doctor, to see to the man who had attacked Misaki. The doctor took equipment out of her bag and injected the man with something which Shouhei told Anna would make him stay asleep until they could lock him up where he couldn't use dangerous items to hurt anyone else.

Suddenly, Saruhiko appeared beside them, looking paler than ever, dark rings under his eyes as if he had not slept all night. Anna sensed immediately the chaos of emotions in him – relief that Misaki was alive, jumbled with distress at how badly hurt he was, tangled with fear that he might yet die from his injuries. As the ambulance crew discussed how best to put Misaki on a stretcher while working around the skewer, Saruhiko said nothing, only stared at Misaki, and Misaki stared back at him, neither of them speaking. The medical team had asked Anna and Shouhei to move back so they could tend to Misaki, and they'd obeyed. But abruptly, Saruhiko stepped right up to Misaki, crouched beside him, and wordlessly peeled aside the flap of his sweater that one of the men from the ambulance had cut through to let them examine his wounds. Saruhiko stared at the skewer protruding front and back from Misaki's arm, looked across at his torn left hand, and lifted a cut flap off his cargo pants to look at the other deep wound in his leg, all without a word from either of them.

It was strangely… what was the word Izumo had used once when he'd thought Anna wasn't listening and was talking to Tatara about his habit of taking Mikoto's hand fearlessly whenever Mikoto got lost in his own depths? Intimate. That's what it was. It was strangely intimate.

That was when Anna looked at Saruhiko too and saw that just like Misaki, his future was in a state of movement in which she couldn't pinpoint anything clear. Then she felt a tingling sensation on the back of her neck when her Strain powers – and maybe a wakeful part of those dormant-again king's powers – told her that a third piece of the puzzle was involved in this odd state of change. It meant that she wasn't at all surprised when she turned around and saw – standing at a distance but watching the scene intently – the Blue king, Munakata Reisi, presenting to her vision a fate no clearer than those of Misaki and Saruhiko.

…

Oh my, thought Weismann. The young man looks like death warmed over.

The Silver king, accompanied by Kuroh and Neko, had hurried from Ashinaka High to the Medical University Hospital as soon as Munakata had contacted him about the incident. The Blue king had remarked that Sceptre 4 headquarters or even the Homra bar would be better places to ask Anna in detail about what had happened. However, with Yata Misaki undergoing what would be hours of emergency surgery to repair a host of torn ligaments and blood vessels, no one from Homra would budge from the hospital. Neither would Fushimi Saruhiko who, it seemed, could shed light on how the man under arrest – neither a Strain nor a clan member – had managed to acquire such impressive telekinetic powers.

So the hospital it was for their briefing.

"Shiro! Shiro! Are we lost? Where are we?" Neko demanded worriedly, trotting after him as they hurried down one long corridor after another.

"Ah… Munakata-san said they were in Block C, in the conference zone on Level Three, so we shouldn't be far," Weismann reassured her.

"This way," Kuroh said, pointing to an overhead board with arrows indicating the directions towards various hospital departments.

Arriving at the conference-room zone, they almost ran into Kusanagi Izumo and Kamamoto Rikio rounding a corner.

"Iromegane!" Neko cried out. "Anna – how is Anna?!"

"Anna's fine," Kusanagi said, making an effort to smile and speak gently to the agitated girl even though Weismann could see that his face was tense with worry. "She's in Conference Room 5 just round the corner. I'm sure she would be very happy to see you, Neko-chan."

"Shiro! I'll go to Anna!" Neko chirped before dashing away.

Weismann communicated to Kuroh with a tilt of his chin that he should be with Neko to make sure she behaved properly among the Homra members. With perfect understanding and a dutiful nod, his katana-wielding clansman walked off after their handful of a kitten.

Kusanagi was instructing Kamamoto: "Stay near the operating theatre with the rest of the guys, and message me at once if you hear anything about Yata-chan. I don't know how long this meeting'll take, but we're only in the next block from the OR, so reassure the gang that Anna and I are close by."

After Kamamoto left, Weismann asked Kusanagi with genuine concern: "How is Yata-san?"

"He lost a lot of blood," Kusanagi said tiredly. "If they hadn't given him a transfusion the second they did, he might have bled out beyond the point of safe recovery. His left hand is in shreds, and they'll have a hell of a job patching it up intricately if he's ever to use that damn hand again. Muscles torn in his right arm too, but that's actually a more straightforward reattachment case. There's a deep wound in his thigh, but the tissues aren't badly damaged, apparently. From what I see, he'll probably live, but you know how major surgery is for regular folk who aren't immortal – it can go any way. Anna can't quite tell right now – she says things are clouded, which is troubling."

"I'm sorry that Yata-san is so badly injured," Weismann murmured. "I hope the operation goes well."

It was mere convention, what he was saying, but at such moments, trite words of empathy could be better than striving to engage a distressed party whose mind and heart were focused only on the person they cared about.

But Kusanagi was saying: "Anna tried to resummon the power she used to shield her and Yata – she wanted to use it again to stop the bleeding – but she said she couldn't. She seems to think it was the desperation she felt to save Yata that enabled her to… as she said, 'pull the floating specks' towards her."

"I see," Weismann murmured thoughtfully.

"These 'specks'…" Kusanagi began. "Are they what Anna says you mentioned at yesterday's meeting with her and Munakata?"

"Most probably," Weismann replied. "But we can't be certain yet. Let's try to find out more when we talk to Anna once Munakata-san is ready."

"Ah, yes – he says to give him thirty minutes more – it seems Fushimi's finishing up organising his findings about the people emerging with powers that don't come from the slate. That kid's pretty shaken by Yata's injuries too, though he'd probably rather poison himself than admit it. I'm heading back to the conference room now. Coming with me?"

"Please go ahead, Kusanagi-san," Weismann said. "I'll join you soon."

Weismann wanted to ponder what he had heard about Anna's commandeering of what was most likely the slate's scattered power. But he was also drawn by what he sensed was the presence of the Blue king not far away – indeed, as he walked towards where he felt Munakata was, he could hear his deep voice in the next corridor, speaking in low tones.

"… everything he needs?" was the tail end of what Weismann heard Munakata saying.

"Yes, Captain," came the reply from a man whose voice he didn't recognise. "We brought Fushimi-san his laptop, tablet and notes earlier, and Lieutenant Awashima is still twisting the hospital director's arm to make sure he gives us that conference room for the rest of the day and doesn't bother the Red clan either. Akiyama-san is in the room checking that the projector is set up."

"Has there been any trouble between the Homra members and the hospital staff?"

"No, Captain," said another man's voice. "The Red clan has been calm. Also, Fushimi-san contacted Yata Misaki's mother immediately after the incident, and she and his stepfather and younger siblings reached the hospital half an hour ago. The Homra guys behaved even better the moment Yata-san's family arrived, and they are unlikely to make trouble while his mother and those two children are here."

"Good. Return to the operating theatre waiting area and stay there until further notice. Let me know immediately if word comes regarding Yata Misaki's condition. Do not get into arguments with the Homra members, but discourage them from harassing the hospital staff if they should become agitated. Notify Lieutenant Awashima if any trouble starts."

"Yes, sir."

He heard footsteps down what was probably half the length of that adjacent corridor before two Sceptre 4 squad members emerged and strode off in the other direction, away from Weismann. The Silver king stepped quietly towards the opening of the passageway they had come from, and found himself looking at Munakata's tall, elegant figure from behind, in full uniform, standing at the halfway point of the corridor – probably far enough not to notice Weismann's presence yet. Especially since his full attention seemed to be on the lone figure in one of the ugly green plastic seats lining the passageway.

Fushimi Saruhiko was hunched over a laptop balanced on his knees, tapping at it briskly. He looked to be in a terrible state. Like death warmed over, as Weismann thought. His face, normally already pale, was almost white, and although the black frames of his glasses were blocking his eyes from this angle, hints of awful dark circles were visible on the skin behind the lenses. His uniform was creased, and even against the deep blue of the fabric, Weismann could see that the cuffs were stained with blood – Yata's, most likely. His hair – which the Silver king remembered wasn't normally terribly neat, anyway – was more of a mess than usual, with a few spiky, congealed ends suggesting that he might have dragged his blood-stained hands unawares through his locks. Smears of dried blood marred his cheeks too.

Munakata stood in silence watching his third in command, who did not seem to register his king's presence at all, and Weismann wondered if the Sceptre 4 captain planned to just stare at the young man until it was time for the meeting. But the next moment, Munakata moved, walking with remarkably soft footfalls, towards a door that Weismann saw led to a men's washroom. He reappeared in less than half a minute and resumed his position in the corridor, just waiting and watching Fushimi. When Fushimi finally stopped tapping on the keys and scroller and folded the laptop screen down, Munakata approached him, causing Fushimi to look up with a start – he had truly barely noted anyone else's proximity.

"Are you ready for the meeting, Fushimi-kun?" Munakata asked.

"Yes, Captain," Fushimi mumbled, getting to his feet and immediately appearing to regret doing so, because Munakata was standing very close to him, effectively trapping him against the row of plastic seats.

"Don't move," Munakata told him.

"Huh?"

"Don't move," the Blue king repeated, lifting his right hand, which Weismann saw held a white handkerchief – Munakata must have gone to the washroom to dampen it under the tap, because he was now wiping the blood smears off Fushimi's face with it.

"What… tch … C-Captain – stop, I can do that myself," Fushimi stuttered irritably, squirming and trying to push Munakata's hand away.

"I said not to move, and that's an order," Munakata told him sternly, continuing to dab gently at the stains on Fushimi's cheeks before folding the damp handkerchief over and meticulously wiping the dried blood off his hair too. One long-fingered hand cradled Fushimi's face to hold his head steady while the other worked on those dark locks. Finally, he folded the square of fabric once more to apply it to the stains marking the younger man's cuffs.

Fushimi, looking like a disgruntled child, scowled but held still.

"It won't all come off your coat without a proper laundering, but this will have to do for now," Munakata stated, stepping back when he was done. "Go to Room 5 and let Akiyama set up. I will join you once Awashima-kun is ready."

Fushimi mumbled something Weismann couldn't make out and got away from Munakata in a manner suggestive of escape.

Weismann slipped into the corridor parallel to the one he'd been watching, and managed to avoid the preoccupied Fushimi's notice as he strode past him to the conference room. Feeling certain that Munakata would stroll out to the main corridor to watch Fushimi walking away, the Silver king wisely wandered off in the other direction to reach Room 5 in a more roundabout way.

"Anna-chan," Weismann greeted the Red king once he entered the room, taking a second to glance at Fushimi, who was already seated at the large rectangular table and hooking up his laptop to the projector with the help of the aforementioned Akiyama. "Are you all right?"

"Weismann," she said softly as she stroked Neko's hair – for his kitten was clinging to the girl around the waist and had obviously been crying, clearly affected by what she had heard of the danger Anna had been in. "I tried to gather the scattered power a second time, but I couldn't."

"So I heard," the Silver king said mildly, seating himself beside her and patting Neko on the head to comfort her, observing at the same time a subtle shake of Kuroh's head which he could interpret as meaning that it was best not to say anything to Neko at the moment as she had only just calmed down. "Don't be troubled by that. The dispersed powers of the slate answered you when you most needed them, and I understand that they responded in a multitude of colours – so they accepted you as not only a king chosen by one of its hues, but a vessel worthy of every aspect of its strength."

"But Misaki… I couldn't summon the power to stop his bleeding…" she said in a subdued voice.

"Anna-chan, I believe you drew the powers to you to achieve a barrier you needed their help to build in order to protect Yata-san. But you have always had the vision that tells you the innermost truth of conscious things, so I believe something in you knew that Yata-san was somehow going to be all right, and that told the powers that you no longer needed them."

"But I didn't know that – I couldn't see Misaki's fate – it was clouded, and I was afraid he would die."

"Oh? Is it still clouded?"

Anna nodded.

"But others' fates aren't?"

"Most aren't. Some are," she said, and her eyes flicked across the table towards Fushimi, who was staring at his cables and screens and ignoring everyone else, even Akiyama who was assisting him.

"Ah," said Weismann, with a tiny smile of understanding. "Anna-chan, I think this 'clouding' may have more to do with, erm, other matters besides immediate impending death…"

The girl looked at him, scrutinising him in a way that he might have found extremely uncomfortable 70 years ago, when he was a skittish fellow. But having lived through strange times and seen so many amazing things, Adolf K. Weismann found himself able to bear up under the penetrating gaze of a Strain king who somehow knew the truth of everything he was saying, yet at the same time was still a little too young to grasp the full significance behind his words.

A moment later, the Blue king and Awashima Seri entered, the Lieutenant wearing a calm expression on her face that reflected her satisfaction with the outcome of whatever arm-twisting she had carried out on the hospital director.

"Good afternoon," Munakata greeted everyone evenly. Akiyama snapped to attention, but Fushimi remained seated, tapping his laptop scroller, not even looking at his two superiors.

The Blue king took the seat next to Fushimi's, and Weismann watched with interest as Sceptre 4's third in command deliberately angled his swivel chair away from his captain.

"I suppose Munakata-san is one of the cloudy ones too at the moment?" Weismann whispered to Anna.

Anna nodded solemnly again, and Weismann's knowing smile deepened a little.

…

Munakata did not consider the presence of Bandou Saburouta and Akagi Shouhei necessary. He would have preferred the Red king to have only her second in command at the meeting. But if Kushina and Kusanagi were basing their selection of attendees on who had witnessed the incident, he supposed it was acceptable.

Yatogami Kuroh and Ameno Miyabi had nothing to do with this, but it was fair for the Silver king to want his clansmen present this time. Besides, it appeared that the cat-human Strain and the Red king had grown attached to each other of late, and the teenage girl was clearly upset that her younger friend had come so close to being badly hurt.

Munakata and Awashima had asked Akiyama to stay and take minutes although he, too, was not strictly required. A small portion of Munakata's reasoning – which he acknowledged was rather petty one-upmanship – was to ensure that the Blue clan did not have fewer members present than the Red. Fortunately, he could base his decision on Akiyama's doing a perfectly acceptable job as acting captain in the Jungle crisis. First-hand information might be important for him during this period, when Fushimi would be investigating the telekinesis cases and worrying about Yata Misaki.

So eleven there were in the conference room, listening now to the Red king's account of what she had experienced this morning. Her strong sense of the scattered power of the Dresden Slate, and her certainty that what she had wielded was indeed that familiar slate's power – and not some other force – was their first solid clue that the potency which had imbued the rock was still in existence, and not utterly lost with the destruction of the physical slab.

Weismann asked Anna several questions about how the power felt, and enquired of Kusanagi, Bandou and Akagi what they had seen of the "shield" she had summoned, pencilling his observations into a notebook with dog-eared pages.

Munakata could tell at once that Weismann was trying to calculate, through his questions about its intensity compared to Red aura, whether the power was continuing to hover around the beings who had once drawn on it (that is, whether it was remaining in the Kanto region) or dispersing to the far corners of the universe; whether the kings might now be able to wield the aspects of different colours instead of only their own; whether these aspects were working in harmony or warring with one another; and what had changed about the power.

Ultimately, the Silver king's fundamental – but unverbalised – questions were: Can we reliably draw on it again? Will it be different if and when we use it? Has the "consciousness" of the power altered from what we knew it to be in the slate? Is it still burdening me with an immortality I do not want?

Those matters would be for them all to investigate in the coming days. For now, the next pressing matter at hand was the telekinesis abilities that were being developed through the app Fushimi had informed Munakata about at 4am.

As Fushimi projected an image of the app's icon – an orange and yellow silhouette of a human head with a hand reaching out of it – onto the screen, Munakata gave everyone a quick rundown of their findings thus far:

Fushimi's questioning of the first telekinetic suspect arrested yesterday and currently incarcerated in the Sceptre 4 cells, had revealed that the programme had been available for at least two months. Anecdotally, from online exchanges Fushimi had quickly scanned through last night, the app seemed to be available only to devices registered locally – no one had reported being able to download it in other countries. And what was more curious was that based on limited checks Fushimi had done – consistent with Akagi Shouhei's experience – whoever was controlling the app's accessibility seemed to have blocked devices registered to known clansmen.

"This suggests that the app's developer has access to data on clan members, down to which devices are registered to them," Munakata finished before handing over the next part of the briefing to a reluctant Fushimi.

"To the best of my knowledge, only two databases exist containing such comprehensive information – the legitimate one on the servers controlled by the Gold clan, while the other would have been info hacked from various sources and stored on the Green king's servers," Fushimi said, sounding as if he would rather be anywhere else than giving a briefing here. "Captain Munakata's initial investigations this morning, in cooperation with his senior Gold clan contacts, so far show no breach of their data, not even during the difficult period coinciding with the Gold king's disappearance. So if the details weren't from there, it could mean that someone managed to retrieve data from Jungle's servers before they were destroyed."

"A former J-rank member of Jungle?" asked Kusanagi.

"Possible," Fushimi acknowledged. "But we've been monitoring Mishakuji Yukari and Gojou Sukuna for weeks, and they've been living quietly. Besides, this isn't their style. Even if you were to tell me that the Green and Grey kings somehow survived the final battle, I'd still tell you that the way that app is set up and how it works simply doesn't have their flavour either – and don't even mention the Strain parrot. I'd say it's more likely that someone else stole the data. And the most likely time for this to have been even remotely possible was in the brief period when Hisui Nagare, Iwafune Tenkei, Mishakuji, Gojou and Kotosaka were all engaged in combat with the other clans, just before the servers themselves were crushed in the building's collapse following the destruction of the slate."

"Another former Jungle member, then? A U-ranker?" Kuroh suggested.

"My first obvious suspect was Oogai Aya," Fushimi said sullenly, the name of his second cousin clearly having unpleasant associations. "However, this doesn't have her fingerprints on it – it's not her style. It's far too crudely executed and insufficiently sly as well as insufficiently playful. Neither is it Hirasaka Douhan's modus operandi or primary area of expertise."

"It's crudely executed?" Weismann asked curiously.

"Like a sledgehammer for chiselling a figurine," Fushimi muttered in disapproval, and Munakata had no doubt he was thinking how much more beautifully he would have done it. "It's haphazard, open to anyone in Japan except us, apparently – and our first psychokinetic suspect said that only after level 10 – which took him six weeks to reach – did the app pop a message up instigating him to use his new powers to take revenge on people who had done him wrong. And only at level 11, which took him a further two weeks, did another pop-up give a spiel on how – and I quote – 'there have always been superpowered humans among us, but they have selfishly refused to share those powers with mankind, then they selfishly destroyed the source and hope of those powers, so I now offer you a chance to develop your own, and you should now make trouble for the selfish ones who tried to keep you weak'."

"Someone with knowledge of the slate and clans, then," Kusanagi sighed. "And of course the 'selfish ones' would be us?"

"Yes, the message specifically named Sceptre 4, Homra and major organisations headed or owned by members of the Gold clan," Fushimi confirmed, projecting a screenshot of the message. "In the case of our first suspect, he eventually applied his new powers to threatening a former employer who had fired him, when he spotted the man dining in a restaurant yesterday. He wrecked the entire restaurant. When I questioned him last night, long after his powers had worn off, he said the app's level 11 message had suggested that creating a ruckus in a public place would also be a good way of troubling Sceptre 4. However, he admitted that he didn't know now why he had taken it to such extremes. He said a kind of madness overtook him."

"That seems to confirm what Anna said about the man we faced this morning," Kusanagi remarked, his words accompanied by a nod from his king. "Anna said she sensed his madness – and anyone in his right mind would agree it was a tremendous overreaction to seriously attempt to kill a young man and a little girl just because a batch of fish was rejected by an eatery."

"That's another reason why the app is unlikely to be the work of any of the Jungle members we've discussed so far," Fushimi said. "All of them may have committed mischief and sought to enable anarchic individual growth at the expense of society, but none of them aimed to cause deliberate harm to the millions of ordinary individuals they wished to expose to the slate's runaway powers. For them, it was more a case of letting people just run with whatever abilities they could awaken in themselves, and hope for the best. This app and its games, however, are different."

"How so?" Weismann enquired.

"They systematically destroy their users' sanity," Fushimi answered bluntly.

This drew a gasp from Akagi: "My young cousin is playing those games! He's at level three!"

"Tell him to stop, but don't get your panties in a twist yet," Fushimi grumbled. "The effects take a while to set in."

"I'm at level eight," Akagi mumbled.

"The app games don't affect anyone whose brains have already undergone the changes and development we've experienced as a result of exposure to the slate's powers," Fushimi revealed.

"But how can you be certain that madness is an effect when we've only encountered two people who've suffered it?" Weismann questioned.

"Because I've researched and developed such games myself," Fushimi said, dropping that bomb into the meeting as if he were casually reporting what he had eaten for breakfast.

"I beg your pardon?" Kusanagi asked in astonishment.

"In the years before Misa… before Yata and I even knew about the existence of the Dresden Slate, kings and clans, we were just two kids who wanted power to… I don't know… take over the world, I suppose. The sort of stuff naïve kids dream of," Fushimi shrugged. "Aside from starting my attempts to hack Jungle's server for the challenge of it in those years, I also researched the scientific possibility of developing superpowers through brain training."

"Wait, wait – this was before you joined Homra – when you were, what? Fifteen?" Kusanagi asked incredulously, as Munakata did his best not to smirk like a proud father.

"Thereabouts," Fushimi muttered impatiently. "Yata was in on my Jungle-hacking plans, but I kept the brain-training research from him, because I didn't like what I found."

"You found baaad stuff?!" Neko cried, her mismatched eyes round as saucers.

"What do you mean, Fushimi-san?" Weismann asked, stroking Neko's hair to settle her.

"After weeding out all the useless research done by cut-rate scientists and psychologists on worthless training to develop the 90% of the brain that old studies erroneously claimed ordinary humans never use in daily life, I was left with only a handful of state- and military-level experiments that could theoretically work. The exercises they used to target areas of the brain that could potentially enhance human power beyond natural abilities were very similar to the exercises on this new app. All the researchers behind these studies knew exactly what they needed to do, and to some extent, how to do it. But none of them were able to complete those final steps required to translate the exercises into workable ones."

"What were they lacking?" Awashima asked.

"Imagination," Fushimi stated tersely. "They were able to devise exercises that would trigger activity in specific areas of the brain in specific combinations that they knew would work. But they didn't know how to translate the activity into development."

"Please explain," Awashima requested.

"An oversimplified analogy would be the difference between correct form and superficial effect in physical exercises. To make a muscle develop as you intend, you have to perform the right movements in the right way, isolating and working the relevant muscle instead of just going through outward motions that move the associated body part, but which are actually relying largely on other sets of muscles to create the movement," Fushimi explained. "But that's still not a close-enough analogy. A closer, yet less precise, way of putting it would be the difference between a regular human merely assuming a particular physical position, and an expert like a grandmaster in yoga, chi and martial-arts meditation assuming that identical position. The regular human would achieve little more than a physical response, whereas the grandmaster would trigger controlled effects on the energy channels of his body and derive health and performance benefits from it. Those scientists failed to use their imagination to go beyond mere surface effects of activating the correct brain areas. They failed to make that further stretch into understanding how to truly hone those activated areas. Their imagination failed them."

"But yours didn't, I take it," Weismann said.

"I worked out what was needed to bridge the gap, and I started crafting a series of brain exercises that built on theirs."

"But…?" Kusanagi prompted.

"I stopped the moment I deduced something else."

"What was that?"

"Practising those exercises over an extended period of time would gradually erode all those aspects of the brain that are beyond its purely physical structures and chemicals – in other words, the very immaterial aspects being honed and developed. In short, such training would make its practitioners lose everything that made them who they were. It would drive them insane. So I stopped all further work in this area. Shortly after, Yata and I joined Homra, and the powers we awakened there were so far beyond any clumsy developing of psychokinetic abilities through brain training that I never looked at my research again. But someone else did."

"You mean…" Awashima began, sounding alarmed.

"My first serious attack on the Jungle server was also the first time I realised that the Green king knew what I was doing and had targeted me in return. He made use of Oogai's familiarity with me to infect me with a virus that was both computer-based and clan-superpowered, and he almost certainly accessed information on all my devices at some point. My brain-training programme must have been stolen too and stored on Jungle's server, although the Green clan never used it. Why should they, when such a method was so clunky and outmoded compared with clan powers? I don't believe it was ever used – until now, when this unknown party in turn stole it from Jungle and adapted the exercises. They're really badly adapted, though – they'll work a lot faster than my original version, but the effects are also much more brutal."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Kusanagi asked.

"Yes," Fushimi replied in a voice that bordered on the strangled, although he maintained steady eye contact with his former Homra comrades. "My research was the foundation for the psychokinetic abilities developed by the man who almost killed Misaki this morning."