Disclaimer: I don't own Infinite Stratos in any sense.

Discord: A3dTszc

(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)

Ichika's eyes were crazy and he knew almost nothing about them. That being said, he wasn't entirely ignorant on the subject. He had been able to make a few inferences and educated guesses about them over the years. But for the most part, everything he had learned had just led him to more questions.

He was pretty sure that it had to do with his genetics, as clearly something was pretty wonky with them now that he could pilot an IS. But he was also fairly certain that the full story was dark, horrifying, and incredibly bloody. He didn't have a whole lot of concrete proof on that front, but that seemed to be where all of the evidence he did have was pointing.

Back when he was six years old, he had unlocked this eye ability by accident. It had been late during the evening one night, and he had been watching an anime series that he really had no business watching. It had been rated for teens and up due to the extreme violence. It certainly had not been meant for six year olds like him, but his sister hadn't been around at the time to stop him from watching it, so he had continued on.

He had become extremely invested in that show. The main character had reminded him of himself in a lot of ways. Not due to being super heroic or anything like that, but due to the fact that the main character had a sister just like he did, and the two of them had been very close. It had been a bond that Ichika had hoped that he'd have with his own sister one day, and that was probably why the show had resonated so much with him.

During the final episode of the series however, the main character's sister had died a pretty brutal death, sacrificing herself to save her brother. And Ichika didn't really know what had happened to him when he had witnessed that scene, even today. Some wires had gotten crossed in his brain or something, because in that moment, he hadn't seen that character, Mio, dying on a television screen anymore. He had seen his real sister, Chifuyu, in her place.

It hadn't been a 2d anime character sacrificing herself for another 2d anime character. It had been his beloved sister sacrificing herself for real. For him. And it had been so vivid and brutal, that he had completely broken down after seeing it.

That anime had a ton of gore in it. Mio's final scene had been an absolute mess, to say the least. She had gotten completely wrecked on-screen. To the point that clean-up crews carrying mops and buckets would have been needed afterwards. The animators had not pulled their punches and Mio had looked like she had swallowed a bomb.

Even to this day, that scene was one of Ichika's most vivid memories, and he still had nightmares about it all these years later.

He could sort of laugh about it now, though. In a self-deprecating way. Some dumb kid like him accidentily watching extremely violent, gory anime and getting traumatized by it? If that had happened to anyone else, he'd have laughed in their face about it immediately after hearing the story. But it definitely sucked when it was him. Even though he could laugh at the concept of being traumatized by a dumb anime, his subconscious mind didn't find it funny in the least, and traces of that trauma still remained. It had practically destroyed his mind seeing that, and on that day, it had even caused him to pass out in shock.

...But then he had woken up the next morning to find out that all was right with the world. His sister Chifuyu had been just fine after he had seen Mio's death, because everything that he had seen had been on a television screen. The world spun on as it always had. His sister had even called him later that day and they had talked for a while about normal stuff.

Superimposing his sister into that scene in place of Mio had all been some sort of crazy hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation, and the overactive imagination of an overly invested child.

That should have been the end of the incident. But it hadn't been. Instead, he had noticed quite quickly upon waking up that there was a nasty and painful sensation behind his eyes that he couldn't explain. They had felt like they were on fire. And a quick trip to the bathroom mirror was all it had taken for him to find out that something was seriously wrong with him.

If his sister had been home at the time, she probably would have freaked out. Or she would have done the Chifuyu equivalent of that, anyway. It was hard to overlook blazing scarlet eyes bright enough to light up rooms, after all.

...But since Chifuyu had been training so hard at the time for the first Mondo Grosso, she hadn't seen Ichika again until after he had already figured out how to turn his eyes off. And since Ichika hadn't wanted to worry her and make her lose out on competing, he had decided to remain quiet about the whole thing.

The original plan had been to tell her about them after that tournament. But when it was over, something else had come up that had stopped him from telling her. And then something else after that. He kept procrastinating that conversation, kicking the rock further and further down the road until eventually, he had woken up five years later. He had never told her, and the rest was history.

During those first few weeks when he had first unlocked them, he had done a lot of panic-Googling, trying to figure out if anyone else had ever had any of the weird symptoms that he had. But nothing had fit. Allergies, eye cancer, Leukokoria, Coats' Disease... none of it had matched.

Nobody else had ever been recorded having these eyes, so he had had to look elsewhere to find any useful information. Perhaps ironically, he had ended up turning to various anime and manga series across the internet for this. Because while there may not have been any real people who could do what he could, there were plenty of fictional anime characters with weird ocular based abilities similar to his own. And he had ended up turning to these resources to try and understand his eyes.

It had been a treasure trove. Plenty of these fictional anime characters had entire story arcs about learning how to use their eye powers. How to turn them on and off at will, how to use them in creative ways, and even the reasons why they had their powers in the first place.

A lot of that information had applied to his situation.

The common theme that Ichika had noticed throughout most of these fictional series, however, was that a lot of the characters' eye abilities were extremely dark in nature, often requiring them to witness some incredibly violent event first-hand to unlock them. Like seeing a family member or close friend getting brutally murdered right in front of them, for example.

...Which really fit in well with the way he had unlocked his own eye ability. He had basically hallucinated that Mio was Chifuyu, and had sort of tricked his own mind into bypassing this condition on a technicality. To unlock the power without ever having to lose his sister at all.

This was his best guess so far as to what had happened that day. He wasn't certain that this was the case, but it was his leading explanation. And he received further confirmation of this theory upon learning how to actually turn this ability on and off at will.

He had to vividly imagine his sister being brutally murdered to do so. Every single time.

This was the sort of ability that he'd expect an anime supervillain to have. Something that someone with a brutal upbringing filled with pain and loss was supposed to have. Or someone evil. Not someone like him who had a loving sister, some great friends, and who had never really lost anything.

So from all of this information he was fairly confident in a few things. He likely had a very violent family. To the point that his sister would be considered tame by comparison. He was probably the child of a pair of mass murdering psychopaths with a weird family bloodline, one that simply wasn't recorded in history.

This was also likely where that side of him came from. Ichika's inner psychopath. He was almost certain that it was tied to his eyes because he definitely didn't remember ever having any of these psychotic thoughts before unlocking them.

It was crazy. On some days he felt that human beings were these amazing creatures worthy of his utmost respect. But then on other days, he planned out how to exterminate them all. He was like the most extreme case of bipolar disorder in history. But unlike all the other nutjobs who just thought about killing everyone around them, Ichika actually had all the tools at his disposal to pull it off for real whenever he wanted to.

He was dangerous, and he terrified even himself. If he ever lost control over his mind and gave into those urges, a lot of people would die very quickly.

But he was also a practical person. He had these weird eyes and they weren't going to go away. All of his childish attempts to get rid of them years ago had failed. So if they weren't leaving on their own, he might as well just make use of them. They were powerful tools.

But he still couldn't shake the feeling that this ability of his was supposed to have been earned through extreme hardship. As if God himself had granted him this power, but had also decided that he could never use it unless his sister died first. And only if he had seen her die personally. First hand.

It'd be a total dick move of course, if God had done something like that to him, but it's what it felt like. That was how he was supposed to have unlocked it.

But nope. He had watched an anime one time when he was six, and had slipped through the cracks on a technicality, cheating God himself.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Ichika asked with a flat stare, after hearing the summary of recent events during his absence. He had just returned to the academy and now he had to put up with this bullshit now?

"Why would I be?" Chifuyu replied.

The two of them were alone in her office.

"But I wasn't even in the room at the time!" Ichika rightfully pointed out.

"And who's fault is that?"

"Oh, come on! You can't just decide stuff about me like this when I'm not there to object to it!"

"That's exactly what I can do, actually."

Ichika stared at his sister in disbelief. If he didn't know her so well, he probably would have missed the tiny crinkling of her eyes, and her slightly upturned lips, indicating that despite the fact that she was doing an admirable job of keeping a professional expression on her face, his sister was actually highly amused at his current situation.

Ichika had had to negotiate with the school's board members before agreeing to be enrolled to allow him to take certain days off in order to continue to run his businesses. Some of what he got into had serious impacts on world governments and he couldn't afford to miss certain obligations. So this agreement had been necessary.

For the past few days, Ichika had been absent from school on one of these outings. And apparently, during this time that he had been away, a vote had taken place as to who the class representative would be. Ichika had, of course, been nominated and won by a landslide. Which was frankly, stupid. It was a stupid situation, and he hated the fact that it had happened.

He didn't want to be the class representative at all. It was too much work for no benefit. But since he hadn't been there at the time when the vote had taken place, he had not been in a position to step down, or so his sister was claiming. So he had been forced to accept by default.

But the stupidity did not end with just that. Oh, no. It had been taken up to the next level. Some crazy British lady named Cedric, or something, had apparently objected to his appointment to this position. An action that had initially put the girl in Ichika's good graces. Because it was stupid how he had been forced to accept simply for not being there to say no, and her pointing this obvious oversight out should have been a respectable move.

But Cedric hadn't done this. She had challenged him for it. And since the rules for electing class representatives had been designed by an absolute walnut, who had done a terrible job of it, it was decided that this challenge would go through. Cedric would duel him for the position that Ichika didn't even want.

Which was stupid. And it removed Cedric from his good graces. Especially after he learned that it was, in fact, the same prissy princess who had accosted him with her squeal-y voice earlier.

"You are to duel for the position of class representative in a week's time," Chifuyu reiterated. "I suggest that you prepare in the meantime."

"No."

There was a moment of silence.

"...No?" Chifuyu raised an eyebrow at her brother's unexpected refusal. "What do you mean 'no'? You can't refuse this request."

"Why not, though?" he asked.

"Because the duel has already been scheduled. You will be taking part in it."

"I understand that," Ichika replied. "But the part that you seem to be forgetting, oh sister of mine, is that I have no incentive to win. I don't want the position. So why should I fight for it? What will you do if I just don't show up to the fight? Disqualify me and declare my opponent the winner? That sounds great! Let's do that and skip all the hassle."

"...You would forfeit a duel? That sounds awfully cowardly, wouldn't you agree?"

"Is it though? I see it as a victory. Giving up is the most efficient way to get what I want. The alternative would be to accept the duel and throw the match, or otherwise lose. That's just unnecessary work to get the same result anyway. And I don't care what people think about it."

"You don't care what your classmates will say if you forfeit without even trying?"

"Should I?"

Chifuyu frowned as she stared at her younger brother.

She hadn't expected him to back down so easily. She had figured that her brother's pride would have forced him to never back down from a direct challenge like that. Especially from someone as bratty as Cecilia Alcott.

Chifuyu had a bit of an ulterior motive for wanting this duel to take place. She was curious about her brother's abilities now, after her last test had only allowed her to get a lower bound estimate on them. So she wanted to see how fast he could pick up on being a pilot, and this was the perfect opportunity.

Cecilia would be an interesting measuring stick to gauge Ichika's potential. At least, that had been the plan. So she found it a little annoying that her brother had found a way to weasel out of it so easily.

She let out a sigh.

"Fine," She said. "You want an incentive to win? What do you want?"

As long as it wasn't too outrageous, she might consider granting him a favour. If he went too far with it though, she'd put her curiosity aside right there and simply wait for another opportunity.

"Hang on, you are willing to actually offer me something to do this? Why do you want this to happen so much?"

"Because it's already been scheduled," she replied. "There will also be some high-profile spectators in attendance―"

"I instantly change my mind," Ichika interrupted.

Chifuyu blinked.

"You mean..."

"Yes. I have no further objections," Ichika declared. "I'll fight Cedric Alabaster in a week's time."

"...Who?"

"The crazy lady."

"Cecilia Alcott."

"That definitely sounds a lot more like a girl's name, I'll admit."

"How did you even mess it up that badly? It hasn't been two minutes since I told it to you."

"Clearly, I wasn't listening."

"Right. Clearly. And is there any particular reason you'd like to share with me as to why you weren't listening to your teacher as she was speaking to you?"

"It was just her name that I blanked out on, Orimura sensei. I listened to everything else. But I just don't care what her parents decided to call her because it isn't important. She isn't important. So I don't see why knowing her name is worth the half second of effort it would require to learn it. She isn't worth that."

"She's your classmate."

"Have you listened to her speak?"

"...Fair point," she conceded. "Fine. But do try to at least put some effort into getting to know your peers. You'll be with them for the rest of the year."

"Sure. I'll put some effort in."

"Right. You're free to go, then."

"Right-o."

Chifuyu stared down at her desk for a while after her brother left, trying to figure out why he had changed his mind so swiftly. He had been doing an admirable job of weaseling out of the duel but then suddenly, he had spun back around and accepted, seemingly for no reason at all, and she didn't know why. So she was trying to figure it out.

Thirty seconds later, Chifuyu cursed in her empty office.

That was why. Her brother was an idiot. Same as usual. As soon as the slightest possibility of making his sister look bad presented itself, he completely reversed course on everything to ensure it didn't happen. She had mentioned VIPs attending the duel to watch, and she could predict the exact sequence of logical steps her brother had probably gone through upon hearing that.

'If I forfeit, all the spectators will see me do so.'

'The VIPs are spectators.'

'Therefore the VIPs will know that Ichika Orimura, Chifuyu Orimura's brother, is a person who backs down from challenges.'

'And what would that say about Chifuyu?'

Fuck. Chifuyu hadn't even meant to try and play that card on him. She knew that her brother would go to insane lengths to prevent himself from making her look bad in any conceivable way, but sometimes she underestimated the devious schemes he'd cook up to ensure he never did.

She let out a frustrated sigh.

Ichika had been extremely self conscious about making her look bad throughout his entire life. Chifuyu had known all about it, but she'd never been able to summon the courage to sit him down and explain to him that he didn't have to worry about stuff like that. She just wasn't very good with those sorts of touchy-feely conversations, so she had spent all of this time instead, secretly hoping that he'd eventually just get over it.

But clearly he hadn't. If anything, he had gotten worse about it.

"Those are some badass hairpins you got there," Ichika declared as he walked past some random blue haired girl he had never seen before. "I approve."

He didn't even turn around to see what the girl looked like as he continued on. He had just noticed her funky hair ornaments in passing.

Ichika was satisfied now, though. He had just fulfilled his sister's request in putting some effort into getting to know his peers. Chifuyu had not quantified precisely how much effort he needed to put in, so he had interpreted that to mean that any non-zero amount would be acceptable. So an off-hand comment to one of them should be enough for the remainder of the school year. He could now continue onwards on his quest in ignoring every last one of them.

Idly, he heard a ruckus stir up behind him as he rounded a corner.

"Eh?! Kanzashi?!"

"What was that about?!"

Ichika didn't hear anything else from them as he travelled out of earshot.

His phone vibrated in his pocket a moment later.

Ichika had an irritated scowl on his face as he walked towards his room.

He had just gotten a text message.

Some ass-hat in America had just beaten his world record time in Appleman and the Pancake of Justice. Ichika had been the previous record holder for fastest time completing that video game and had held that title for the past five years straight. But he had just gotten a notification that his time had been beaten by a whopping two seconds just a minute or so ago.

This would not stand at all. Ichika quickly navigated to his social media pages on his phone and sent out a quick update that he would make an immediate attempt to retake the lost record in a few minutes, and that he would be streaming as soon as he could. School was done for the day, and all of his out of school projects were bottlenecked and could not go faster than they were, so he had plenty of free time.

Some people in his position probably wouldn't consider it worth their time to reclaim a world record from a game that almost nobody had ever heard of before, but this was a matter of pride. Because Orimura Ichika was the best gamer in the world. It was an unofficial title, sure, but it was widely accepted as true.

He currently held the world record for most simultaneous world record speedruns held by one person. Which was a roundabout way of saying that he was better than everyone else at life in general. So every time one of his times was beaten by someone else, he had to retake it immediately. He had no choice.

"God-damn hillbilly bastard," he mumbled as he opened the door, and walked into his room. The Americans just couldn't leave his times alone.

Houki wasn't there at the moment. Looking at the time, this made sense. She was probably down at the cafeteria eating dinner, or perhaps practicing Kendo. That actually worked out nicely. Ichika could quickly take back his record and then meet up with her after. He grabbed his bag full of all the stuff he needed and headed back out.

It really hadn't taken long at all. First try, Ichika reclaimed his record in that game.

He just loved how salty people got. Most speedrunners had to spend hours and hours and hours to get even a single decent run on whichever game they chose to play. But Ichika had a reputation of sitting down and getting solid runs unbelievably quickly and consistently. Usually, on the first or second try he'd be on world record pace. He had almost no dead runs, and man did people get mad about it. He had been accused of cheating so many times.

But he didn't.

Make no mistake, if he wanted to, Ichika could absolutely dominate the entire gaming community if he ever activated his eyes during the middle of a run. But he would not be able to get away with something like that. His runs would look way too robotic and perfect if he did. Without any human imperfections, there would be no way to convince anyone that he was actually legit.

It also wouldn't be any fun, either. Additionally, if he was going to make his eyes bleed and give himself a migraine, he wanted to be doing something constructive in exchange for the pain. Not beating someone in a video game.

Tens of thousands of people had just watched an hour-long stream of him beating the crap out of a bunch of fruit themed enemies in record time, and of course, facing down the Pancake Champion himself at the end. An absolute demon, with notoriously brutal boss mechanics. But with Ichika's skills, it had been no problem at all.

Now he was standing over the panting form of Houki as she lay sprawled out on the floor, flushed and exhausted. They had just had a spar, and Ichika had pushed her to her limits during it.

"You improve fast," Ichika praised. "It's actually pretty amazing to watch."

Houki blushed furiously.

"I-Ichika…"

"Yeah?"

"Would you mind if we do this… more often? Like, every day? I haven't had any real challenges like this in a long time."

"Yeah, sure."

"In exchange…" Houki began, hesitantly. "I could… teach you a little about the IS. You know, if that's something that you think would help. I know you have that duel with Cecilia coming up and all…"

"Yeah, sure," Ichika agreed. "That actually sounds perfect. So... what? Were you thinking, practice matches in the morning, IS stuff in the evening?"

"Yeah!" Houki agreed wholeheartedly.

"I-I mean…" she backtracked, trying to make it sound like less of a big deal. "Yeah, that would work best."

"Sounds good." Ichika offered his hand to Houki. Blushing, she tentatively grabbed it, and Ichika pulled her up to her feet.

"Y-you've gotten really strong, Ichika."

"Eh, I like to think I do alright."

"If you fight like that against Cecilia, I don't think she'll stand a chance."

"I guess that depends on how easily sword fighting translates over to IS piloting. And on how much about that crazy machine I can pick up from you before then. Wouldn't you agree?"

Houki smiled at the comment, and the two of them headed back to their room.

AN: I have no beta reader for this story. So there may be errors.