Awaited Arrival

Yuki’s eyes darted around the room examining everything within. However, it didn’t leave him with a lot to work from. ‘It’s the emptiest room in the entire school… There’s nothing here.’ Each corner and surface of the classroom looked almost too good. It looked painted clean of any dirt. An eerie feeling sank into his body looking at it.

Glancing back at Hiroshi, none of it made sense. ‘He’s a complete mess, yet it doesn’t even look like a fight happened in the room. What’s going on?’ The only stain in the entire room seemed to be him. Not even the blood that dripped from him seemed to be staying. ‘None of this is real…’

He returned to Takako. Source of all the problems, she simply seemed to be standing there. Not even watching him, just standing waiting. ‘Why is she doing this? It doesn’t make any sense for her powers…’

A terrible cough ripped through the forced silence of the room. It sounded as though Hiroshi would die. Compulsion had Yuki’s legs nearly running to get to him in time, but he dragged himself. Takako might not have made a move yet, but he couldn’t risk letting his guard down against her for even a moment.

With each moment that passed, it became more clear to him that she seemed to have no interest in doing anything to stop. ‘What’s her game now? I expected her to be different. Insane or crazy, murderous, anything, but what she is now. She’s defying quite a few of my expectations.’

Once he was near enough to Hiroshi to not yell across the room, he took a look at the progress. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a broken toy.”

“Are you still in pain?”

“Of course…actually no?” Hiroshi blinked a little confused that he had become so expectant of the pain that he didn’t recognize when it was gone. He couldn’t move his body, as he was still too exhausted to move.

“Good, I can’t do a perfect job right now, but you should no longer be in any danger.” Yuki began to walk towards Takako, still perplexed by the whole situation.

Pressing his back against the wall to get a little leverage, Hiroshi stood up, but immediately fell back down. “Dammit…” Nothing was working for him. He had to watch Yuki do what he should be doing. “Yuki!”

“If you’re going to tell me to kill her you’re wasting your breath.”

“Be careful. She’s somehow got more tricks than we ever thought possible.”

Narrowing his expression as he stared across the room at Takako, his personal fight with her began. He believed he prepared himself for anything to happen. But such preparation was empty before Takako. “I’m starting to get that feeling.”

Chapter 352 – Awaited Arrival

A slightly bigger smile drew across Takako’s face seeing the seriousness coming through Yuki. She seemed to have an eagerness in her eyes. “Finished everything that you wanted to do?”

“You’re surprisingly accommodating,” he noted, still not sure what Takako’s goal was. Now that he confronted her, she became even more of a mystery than before. “I expected you to stop me.”

“I have no interest in giving you more fuel.”

“Fuel?”

“I’m very aware of what happened the last time someone you knew was killed in front of you. I’m not making a mistake like that.”

His eyes narrowed a little, still trying to get a read on Takako. “I see, so you’re not as generic cliché as you seemed.”

“There’s the playful banter that I was expecting.”

“I don’t really have the mood right now for any sort of casual humor.”

“But I was so looking forward to a lively exchange before I killed you. You’re disappointing my image of you.”

“Then we’re both ignoring expectations.” She had a playful, not quite child-like behavior while still fixed with darkness that hung over her tainting everything. If he could see aura’s he knew that her’s would be a canvas of black.

However, he wanted some answers from her. ‘Hopefully, I can understand more about her before the fight begins. I’ve yet to fight her, but with how badly Hiroshi was after his fight she is on a different level than the others I’ve fought. Worse still, she’s likely got whatever inhibiting power so I can’t be direct. This is likely going to be my hardest fight yet…’

It was all calculated, even though he stalled. “So what happened to you? After you were kidnapped, we found you completely broken.”

“I got better.”

“That’s intentionally vague.”

“You’re just delaying, because you know that you can’t defeat me.”

Keeping most of his reaction in check, Yuki continued to push the issue. There were too many unanswered questions and nothing about the entire situation made any sense. “Even if I’m delaying, I’m still trying to understand how this all happened. You don’t just recover from brain damage.”

“I wouldn’t say what I had was brain damage.” The smile dropped from her face. Memories of the event came back to her. She matched the grave seriousness of Yuki as she resumed explaining. “Saki explained it to you. The only problem is that unlike her, I knew nothing about what the man that had kidnapped me for. Though thanks to her, I now know the whole picture.”

‘So she can either read memories or Saki just flat out told her. That explains why she called me King then.’ Takako carried all of his secrets on top of her own. That made her exceptionally dangerous. He couldn’t allow those secrets to escape, but he had no way of knowing what she planned to do. It put him in a position that he found very distasteful. “So you know everything then.”

Takako seemed to pick up on the hints of desperation in Yuki’s voice. “That’s right. I’m aware of who you are. And that the man that kidnapped me was looking for Ayumi, not you like everyone thought. Because I knew nothing, I hadn’t even met her before, the man couldn’t find anything in my mind. He was quite thorough, convinced that I knew something and only when I broke did he understand.”

“The damage was done…”

“That’s right. Not that he really seemed to care about what happened to me or the others. I was left in that hospital completely broken, unable to comprehend or acknowledge anything. My awareness of my identity was gone.” She lifted her hand to point at Yuki, no longer passive. “And you just left me like that doing nothing.”

“I couldn’t control my power at that point. And even now, I couldn’t have fixed the damage. I might have made it even worse.”

“What could be worse than being locked in a prison unable to move, think, react, just forever bound? I’m was a bystander in Ayumi’s personal war!”

“Is that why you’re doing all of this? Taking out your frustrations upon innocents because you were done the same to?”

“All of this?” Takako stretched out her arms to her sides calling out to the city. “No, all of this is your fault.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You gave me this power. And as I’ve figured out thanks to the thousands of minds I’ve tapped into, I’ve reached the conclusion.”

Yuki already had an idea where she was going with everything. ‘This is why it’s my problem to solve and not someone else's. All of this is coming back to me. If I hadn’t made that mistake and lost myself in my emotions none of this would have happened.’ He was going to hear her out though. Every piece he gained from her would give him more of an idea of what her power was and her thoughts. She was an unknown to him.

“It’s your fault because you gave us powers that matched our personalities or wishes. You gave us what we needed or wanted. And that’s why I have this power. Why all of this is happening. In order to escape the prison you left me in I had to use my power. You gave me the keys for my own escape.”

“How does mind control allow you to regain your sense of self?” It was back to the same question as before. Even if he started to understand part of it. How she returned from the vegetative state she was in before made no sense to him. There remained a piece missing.

“That’s because my power isn’t mind control.”

“What?! You’re taking control of people, what could it be other than mind control?”

“Perhaps you should be asking yourself that question. You’re the one that gave this to me.”

“A hundred million people potentially got powers, I’m not going to know what every single person got!”

“Then you’ll just need to figure it out.”

The atmosphere suddenly started to change in the room. Yuki could feel that their conversation came to a close. ‘I’m not ready yet to fight her. I don’t know anything about her power if it’s not mind control. I can’t even guess how Hiroshi was beat up. I need more information to build a plan from!’ He kept his uncertainty and hint of panic as managed as he could. Going blind into the fight ended up being the only thing he could do.

“Once you’re dead, I’ll be free completely. I’ll be safe once more!” She suddenly shifted into a very familiar fighting stance. Takako was ready.

‘Saki?! She’s using the martial arts style we learned at the dojo! But how?’ Yuki didn’t get much time to think about it as Takako disappeared from his sight. All he felt was a force slamming into him. It rocketed him through the classroom and out the school. Bursts popped with each wall he hit on the way out.

He was prepared for such things to happen. After Saki sent him flying, he had plans in place to prevent that. However, it didn’t seem to be actually doing its job. Yuki could only rely on his power to help him when dealing with people physically far faster than him.

His powers stopped him after flying for nearly a kilometer in the air. Hovering above the city, he stared back at the school. He tried to ignore the pain that was throb in his side from whatever she hit him with. Yuki only had guesses. “Damn, she’s as fast as Saki it seems. Though, at their speeds, I can’t really say how accurate that is coming from me. Not that it really matters, it screws me over either way.” He had only been saved by the fact that he had his powers reacting to her movement. So she never actually touched him, but the force of her movement still left an impact on his body. Otherwise, her inhibiting power would have gotten him killed immediately.

Yuki pushed himself back through the air towards the school. He still didn’t have much of a clear view of Takako’s abilities. “I already had guessed as much that the powers lined up with the individual. So I figured that being on the track team, she’d have speed and agility like Saki. Just glad she lacks the physical strength. I’d probably be dead if it had been Seiji.”

As he moved to the hole in the school, he saw Takako waiting for him. She seemed to know that it wasn’t enough to take him down. Though it made him think back to her little comment before she attacked him. “What did she mean by being safe?” It was a strange comment that started to nag on him.

Landing back in the school, but outside of the classroom he saw a completely different state of affairs. Water hung from the walls and stairs, though very thinly. It looked to be evaporating at an unusually high rate. While the state of the school looked in poor repair. Damage from the fighting before made it clear that Hiroshi had been busy.

Yet, when he stepped into the room everything was erased clean and untainted. The unnerving sense about the place came back. He didn’t understand it other than he had a good guess at the source. Staring at Takako, she gave her introduction to him and their fight to bring an end to the chaos started. “It’s time that I resolve the problems I created. I won’t be dying today, Takako!”