K: Tales of Midnight

Chapter One: Sashimi (pt. 1)


Saruhiko Fushimi trekked his way through back-door alleyways and near-deserted pockets only frequented by shady under-dwellers and the occasional stray cat. The bustle of ordinary life come street-side in Shizume was too burdensome, mostly for the noise, but also for the work Fushimi did. It wasn't the type that rivaled afternoon strolls, business liaisons, lovers' dates, or errands to the supermarket, nor would he have looked the part besides. What he was doing, and where he was headed, he required the long saber of Scepter 4 strapped around his waist.

It was warm. The sun was on the verge of dipping down beneath the littered glass formations rising over lesser, not-so-grand, though equally encroaching structures he wove in and out of like a rat.

It had recently rained, which would have seemed a pleasant deter from the heat of summer's final remnants dwindling into fall, though it only served to make the day wetter, the air muggier, and the orangish glare from the setting sun bounce more profoundly off the mirrored surfaces created by the downpour.

Fushimi had had the misfortune of finding himself caught in the storm not twenty minutes past with nothing but a narrow awning shielding him from soaking up the water like a sponge. Now slightly damp and smelling like whatever mildew lingered in the greyed and battered alcove of what he assumed to be the backside of a kitchen serving soba, he slid a finger up the bridge of his nose, straightening his rims, and turned down an adjacent alley, only to come grinding to a halt on locking eyes with a tawny-marred degenerate less fortunately swamped. Its hair was wet in filthy clumps and standing straight on edge; it's angled pupils rounded with alarm. On sighting him careening down the lane, it stiffened on all fours, hissed through what appeared to be the remnants of a fishbone, bore its fangs at him, and briskly scampered off.

Fushimi clicked his tongue disgustedly and ventured on another couple blocks, past rows of identically rancid-smelling dumpsters made all the more wretched when soaked, and finally to a metal door seemingly the same as every other, only this one bore a semi-high-tech panel just above the handle: one that called for a numeric passcode as well as biometric retinal and finger scans. While clearly fashioned as a warning unto others, this obstruction seemed far less of a disturbance and more of an incentive to continue, and Fushimi narrowed in, setting instantly to work.

He shoved a hand inside his pocket, drawing out a slender metal box akin to a cigarette case. Opening it, he retrieved a piece of tech the size of a Scepter 4 button, which he set atop the panel.

Next, he leveled his forearm to the panel itself, typing away at the buttons on his wrist device. A small holographic screen appeared and scanned the pad, locking in the signal. The corresponding LED screen lit up instantly, spasmodically displaying rows of numbers until the password was acquired.

After, having set the metal box between his teeth, Fushimi dove inside it once again for a thin slice of silicone, which he formed across his finger, then the scanner. A light beep in the affirmative confirmed the match and he scraped the rubbery glove back into the box.

Lastly, he reached up and clicked a micro-button on his rims. A clear white light along his lenses flashed up once, then zoomed back down, changing the hue of his eyes from blue to hazel green. He leaned in close and looked into the scanner. A horizontal line of LED green shot out, whizzing up and down his optical features, issuing a final beep as the door unlocked, and he slid inside.

It was dark, less stuffy than outside, but cool at least.

Silently, he slithered through the basement, past the lobby on the ground floor, and onward to the first — a vast grey landscape littered with a maze of cubicles, side-offices, and a conference room: your standard office space, empty and deserted on the weekend; yet Fushimi knew better. It was why he came there in the first place — to the Susanoo Trade Building; more importantly, the location of the stolen Kawaguchi Algorithm. It had taken him weeks to track it down, and even though he'd found it, he knew it wouldn't stay in one place very long — certainly not out in the open in the center of the city. Maybe that was the idea, he had thought. Hide it in plain sight. Strolling down a narrow makeshift walkway in between the cubicles, he huffed with annoyance. "Or don't bother hiding it at all," he said aloud. "What a pain." Such an obvious ploy, if true, meant only one thing: he wasn't alone. This, he had come to realize; in fact, he'd counted on it, which is why, ducking hard beneath a nearby cubicle, he escaped a sudden aura-less blast that zoomed across the room, sweeping white and yellow streaks atop the hazy shadows of the dark.

A zapping boom erupted, sending papers flying through the air. The computer at the desk above him ruptured in a surge of wire and plastic, the upper portion of the cubicle dismantled in a sea of smoldering pieces from what neither was a bomb, nor a bullet, but the result of an electro-current issued from an arm blaster, its discharge resembling that of an exploding power line.

"You've got to be kidding me!" he grumbled, slamming up against the cube's dilapidated wall. Clenching irritably, he dipped his head against the bristly felt, blinked once against the ceiling, and dove into a roll across the floor.

Another blast ensued, rushed and frenzied by his onslaught, and missed him altogether as he rose fist-first to smash the face of his opponent. The man fell in a heap of cheap metal armor to the floor.

Fushimi sighed, twisting out a kink in his neck. "Idiot."

Kneeling down, he drew a set of braces from his pocket, snatching flaccid arms and spinning them around, cuffing them together. "So that's how it's going to be," he said, rising.

And so it was. With every room he came to on his spiraled track from first to second floors, from third to fourth, and onward to the fifth, he was met in equal likeness with another clunky foe, each one more moronic than the last, and all without a lick of supernatural power. This observation, given the nature of his occupation and the severity of his mission, Fushimi found peculiar, yet it was nowhere near as puzzling as it was frustratingly time-consuming, until finally, having punched his way through every minor muscle man and every wave of harmless static bolts propelled against him, he found what he was looking for.

In the eleventh floor data storage room, dark but for the dim electric glow emitted from rows of blinking storage racks, Fushimi caught the vague, illuminated features of a woman scanning neon columns of encryption on a laptop in the corner by the door.

Fushimi grasped the saber at his waist, issuing the Scepter 4 emergency draw command. The sword unlocked itself and the steady 'shink' of its release produced the blade itself, its silver tip ignited with a gleam as he advanced into the room.

"I wouldn't do that," said the woman, still eyeing the screen. Before he had a chance to say a word, Fushimi found the meaning of her warning as he drew another step — directly onto an electrical pad that stunned him to the floor. The woman pursed her lips. "Told ya."

Forcing dissolution from his eyes, Fushimi grunted more in anger than in pain and fumbled through his pockets, digging out a tiny metal orb no larger than racquet ball. He ran it over gently in his palm, fingering a button on its side. With the faint contortions of a grin, he clicked it and the orb lit with a start, letting out a rhythmic beeping chime that quickened, growing louder as he rolled it in a hollow clink across the floor. "Overconfidence," he scoffed. "Just shows how stupid you are."

The woman chuckled, peering up at last. She looked at him, her gaze an eerie shadow in the dark. A spark of light ignited in her eyes. Her focus realigned itself and centered on the orb, its flashing signal 'tink, tink, tinking' toward her and she beamed, grinning wide with a guffaw before slapping her computer shut and bolting out the door the moment of the blast.

Amidst the ringing uproar in his ears, Fushimi heard a muffled cry and quickly gained his feet, screeching his slick heels atop linoleum tiles and the ruptured remains of her laptop strewn across floor, all the while waving and coughing over acid-smelling smoke and flying pieces of debris.

He catapulted out into the hall, and, swinging side to side, discerned the metal clack of a door slamming down the western corridor.

A few steps later he was at the door, sending up a momentary glance at the plague beside it, equipped with a mumbled, "What the — ?" before bounding through it. "The hell are you playing at?" He whispered between panting breaths up the stairs, two, three steps at a time. "Or are you really that brainless?"

He could hear the clicking footsteps of her flight along the upper storeys; leaning past the railing, he could see dark wisps of clothing as she zipped around the corners.

Saber firm in hand, he hastened his pursuit, bursting moments later out onto the graveled surface of the roof.

The red and yellow coruscance of present-creeping dusk struck him in a sudden blinding headache, and the clash against the humid layer thickening the air was nearly suffocating, though he hardly had the time to bask in the discomfort that it brought. With his first skidding step out the door, a force as that of a hurricane of culminating thunderclaps arrayed with lightning bolts came shooting through the air.

Whether by his skill or acting on an impulse, he resisted the advance, brandishing his saber in an instant swipe before him, the ice-blue barrier of Scepter 4 protecting him from harm — or so he thought. He jolted at the impact, sliding crudely backward with a curse, digging his heels into the loose layer of pebbles in an effort to sustain the wall of supernatural fumes that towered overhead like the emergence of a sandstorm in the dark.

It was an aura: that, he knew full well, however this was far more potent, explosive, dangerous. While his produced a steady wave of blue, what tempest wailed before his eyes was dark like blackened pillars of destruction, wild, unpredictable, pervaded by a labyrinth of convulsive sparks that whizzed out one-by-one to pierce his shield and strike his every side.

He toughened in a grimace, a line of sweat appearing on his temples as he watched the wall erupt in one high-voltage boom that dove into a crash atop his sword. The hell! He roared internally, feeling the vibration suck him upward as the aura rose again, billowing to fill the sky and mask what little light resisted night's approach.

The dark had all but wrapped itself around him, forcing him inside, twisting ever upward in a raging, fuming vortex, plummeting again with the insurmountable force of a hammer that dropped him to his knees.

He hollered out in pain and sudden tightness, tainted yet untouched. The blow had struck him from within. His aura reached its pinnacle. His body felt the strain. It could not take the weight but rather urged him to implode, his force of power fumbling away. I'm not strong enough for this! He realized.

The roaring thunder boomed, a squall of coal-like power gushing in his ears. Clenching hard, he set a second hand along his hilt. Still, the aura bore his to the ground. Nearly, he was at his end. He began to sense the last of his aura dwindling into trenchant nonexistence.

Broken from the world outside, unable to escape, his consciousness cascaded into hazy, blotted scenes parading round his eyes; then all gave way and flew apart, unhanding him at once.

The yellowed afterglow revealed itself; the air that weighed him down before felt light against his skin.

The torrid blast dispersed itself and faded with the breeze, prevailing in the midst, the woman standing placidly before him, unmarred, unscathed, and perfectly at ease. By way of tepid streams, the final wisps of ashen power swept her long black waves across her face and the hem of her open trench coat in a flap against her knees.

Residing in her grasp, a silver-sheened rapier was drawn and resting at her side. Her gaze, as like the rest of her, was dark, focused like a serpent on Fushimi.


Chapter One: Sashimi (pt. 2)

(Cover Photo: x0401x)