The fight was brutal.
Tatsumi moved with speed and litheness, evading attacks, blocking some, his shadows hissing toward his attackers. He had already taken out one of the four, the man named Yoshido, but the big guy was tenacious and he was powerful. One blow had flung the glasses right off Tatsumi's face, leaving a deep cut that had nearly taken out an eye, and he was bleeding copiously. His healing power was taking a back seat to his fighting power, but he had to balance it or he would simply keel over from blood loss.
"Not so tough!" his opponent mocked and gathered magic for another strike, but this time Tatsumi was ready.
The fire ball arced back as it hit his shadow wall, right at the other young man and hitting him straight into the chest. He hadn't seen it coming. With a cry he collided with the wall behind him, going to his knees.
"Bastard!"
Tatsumi just smiled, a grimace more than a true smile, blood everywhere. His clothes were singed, slashed and torn, but so were the others. The room around him looked like a tornado had been through.
"You think you are so strong?" his opponent yelled. "Well, how about you fight us without your shadows!"
Lights glared into existence, so bright it hurt, so bright it burned, and so bright that there wasn't a shadow to be seen. Tatsumi drew a trembling breath, his mind feverish with so much power that raced through him. He was reaching his limit, though that wouldn't stop him. Limits could be overcome.
The Shadow Master still remembered the very first time he had ever used his shadows under the guidance of his sensei. He had been so very young back then, dead for only two years and working as a shinigami. His teacher had discovered that he could control shadows just a few weeks prior to this training session and it had both shocked and elated the other man. Shadow Masters were rare, their magic powerful and dangerous, and those who couldn't train their minds to utter discipline were usually consumed by their own weapons.
That day he had felt something inside of him wake. It was something terrible, something hungry and dark; something feeding on his anger and rage, his feeling of helplessness and inadequacy. But it was also warm and gentle, the sharp edges just a diversion, and it was there, inside him, part of him.
Blackness.
All devouring.
All enveloping.
Slick darkness.
Shadows...
Shadows were everywhere, even throughout the brightest day. He had learned how to detect them, to feel them, to weave them as he wanted them to. There wasn't a tendril that escaped his notice, that wasn't under his command, and he wielded them with total precision.
His sensei had been thrilled to have such an adept student.
And he had pushed his limits until there was nowhere else to go.
Tatsumi smiled humorlessly. There was always a way to surpass a limit, he knew. Always.
Today he would prove it.
"There is no light without shadow," he whispered, feeling the shadows everywhere.
The lights were coming from overhead.
Fool, he mused.
The room might be bathed in shadowless illumination, but there were always shadows. If not visible, then invisible, and right now they were directly underneath his last three opponents.
He touched the living, breathing blackness, the darkness that was shadows, and his mind took control of every single molecule of his weapon. He reached deeper than he ever had, coaxed even the slightest trace of shadows into bloom, and he let it feed off his strength to grow and become what he needed. Tatsumi felt his body sing with the power he wielded, felt every nerve ending screech with the energy it endured, and then he let it rip free. The energy lines inside his body, those that channeled his shinigami magic, opened to the rush and onslaught of a magic they had never had to suffer, but he ignored the warning signs.
"Kei!" Fuki cried in realization, just before Tatsumi let the man's own shadow roar upward like a vengeful underground creature.
Kei yelled in surprise and pain.
His cry was soon echoed by the other two.
Tatsumi had to evade a new attack as Fuki tried to stun him, still fighting off his shadows, but it had been a half-hearted aim since the girl was busy untangling herself from what was tying her down. He let his weapons dance between the spears of power from his opponents, never to be touched, deflecting harmful energy coming his way and destroying what was a threat.
And then there was another scream. A scream from a voice Tatsumi knew, from a man he loved so deeply, he would fight whoever was in his way, and he froze in shock.
"Yutaka!"
His power peaked, pushed to the limit, overcoming that last wall and finally tearing down the last line of his defense. He felt his magic spike and then flow over the final boundaries, opening whatever energy lines it could find in his body to use, tearing out of him in a screeching mass.
Like an immense wave, shadows boiled out of the floor, the corners, wherever they had been banished by the light, and Kei gave a strangled scream as they drowned him, pushed him away. Tatsumi was already moving, running toward where the cry had come from, and he heard another rough scream, filled with pain.
"Taka," he breathed. "No!"
The eyes were no longer the color of the sapphire sky. They were cold orbs of determination, glistening with the power no longer contained inside a man who had been nothing but strict control for all his life. Deep inside whirled a silver whirlpool that mimicked the black, twisting mass that was all around him.
The shadows destroyed what was still whole and tore down what was still standing as their master ran to where he had heard his lover and partner scream in so much pain.
° ° °
Mother, the heart JuOhCho intelligence.
She had access to all security and access levels. She was present in the world of the living to gather information, and she dealt out assignments to the Shokan Division. She was more efficient than the old methods. Enma had had to develop her because of the rapid growth of humanity, the sheer number of souls to manage. No person could do it alone, not even the Lord of Hades with his limitless power. To stop his own depletion of resources, time and management power, Enma had brought Meifu into the next century, so to speak.
Mother was the mirror image of the Palace of Candles. She recorded the history of humanity, she kept track of all souls and reported anomalies, like missing souls or those who had died but hadn't let go. That was when the shinigami went out to try and find the errant soul. The Master of the Palace only recorded the names, as well as birth and death. He was a bookkeeper, an assistant manager. Mother was everything, including that.
And she contained absolutely everything; simply everything. From the first spark of life to the first human, the first soul to ever live and die, everything about the first of the Gods, the first Lords, the first Masters, the first Enma. She was a universe of knowledge.
Watari had been connected to that vast mind before, but only throughout her creation. He had turned a lifeless assembly of computer chips and wires into this. He had given her magic, he had connected her from the physical plane to the metaphysical one. He had extended her limit until she was limitless, until she was as vast as the realms, and only one physical access point had remained: the lab underneath Enma-Daiou's palace.
Now, being inside this vast, endless mind, Watari had access not only to the data he needed. He also absorbed everything else. Things brushed past him, things that piqued his interest, things that, combined with what he had found out lately, made a suddenly horrifying sense. He felt his mind stretch, felt it want to dive into the infinity that was Mother, attracted to it like a moth to the flame. And it would be just as deadly. He hadn't been here for too long. Any wrong step and it might end in a catastrophe.
Watari tried to concentrate on finding Terazuma, locate him in Limbo, but it was close to impossible to ignore the knowledge around him.
:connect: Mother whispered. :link established:
And he kept absorbing it.
:absorption rate approved:
No! Enma's name, no! He couldn't...
But she kept touching his mind, kept touching their connection, kept... updating him.
:configuration complete:
Mother, no!
:access granted:
Watari was flung into the core unit, screaming in fear and pain as his mind tried to compensate as it had done in the past. It was like getting back onto a horse, but the horse was a lot bigger and he felt arthritic. It hurt and it was impossible to hold on and it... it...
Hurt!
His whole body spasmed inside the virtual reality. Watari felt himself trying to compensate, but it was like throwing a bucket of water onto a burning building.
Suddenly, thing were so clear. Knowledge was there. Knowledge and realization and shock. The truth about it all, about the plans, the deceit, the problems, the instabilities, Tsuzuki's true role. The plans for his friend's future.
So... cold and calculating and terrifying.
"Why?" he whispered, stunned, ignoring the pain.
Mother couldn't answer that. She was a logical being, still a computer despite her sentiency. She couldn't show him the future either, only the facts, what had entered her mainframe.
Watari shuddered and gathered his racing mind.
"Show me Terazuma," he requested, his voice lost in the wide expanse of cyberspace. It wasn't his voice either that activated the search, it were his thoughts.
It didn't take long from here, at the heart of Mother.
Encased in a thin layer of protective shielding, Terazuma drifted between the realms.
"Gotcha," he murmured.
He began to pull back, separate himself from the system, and his mind exploded into agony once more.
Not used to this, he thought dimly. Too long. Way too long...
Oh gods...
tbc...