Reluctant Beast

Nothing happened the entire walk. No words exchanged, no subtle movements for tricks. It was just a simple walk, almost as if they might have been good acquaintances. Calling them good friends would have been too much, real friends would have talked. They just looked completely comfortable with the situation. No questions. No problems.

Yet it didn’t change the fact that it all had to end eventually. The point at which they reached a safe distance from everyone else came. Neither would react if it was too soon or too long. Both just seemed to agree on the matter in silence. The distance was enough.

Such behavior was a natural course for Haruo since if he said anything it would have been a surprise. He read the atmosphere clearly to know what was going on. A completely passive approach. If it had been any more willing, you might have thought he already had surrendered himself to Teris.

Turning to face the other, Teris broke his featureless expression the moment he looked at Haruo. It would have been impossible for even someone like Seiji not to see how excited the man was about the potential that Haruo represented for him. “You’re a very interesting man.”

Stone faced, Haruo made no sort of twitch to mark his own quandary on Teris’ reaction. ‘He’s still referring to my power or something else? Feels like he’s looking deeper.’

Haruo was correct about Teris. “I’ve been looking over the reports about you. Unlike the others, you’ve shown off your power the least with only a single engagement. You’re a cautious individual. It’s left things with a lot of uncertainty regarding you. Makes me very curious.”

Unknown to Teris, it was largely not a case of caution. It was often just how things worked out for him. ‘Fighting is unnecessary. Best to avoid it when possible.’ He traveled with them, but wasn’t motivated by the same things as them.

Digging his hand around in some void, which ate his arm up to the elbow, produced a stack of papers. Teris flipped through enjoying the tactile feeling of the paper. “The reports from the other Agents are probably the strangest I’ve seen since I’ve joined. It says you stayed behind to allow the escape of two others.”

Such information was hardly news to him, since he was present. So he wondered what the man tried to achieve by bringing up something unneeded.

“Says here that the entire situation just ended. None of the Agents report about an engagement of any sort. Just that after your comrades left things just ended. Very mysterious. Surrounded by twenty Agents and nothing happens, if the reports are to be believed.” Teris tossed the papers back into the void, disappearing from sight. Refocused, his eyes locked on Haruo with a deeply penetrating stare. A stare that wanted to dissect and breakdown every part and piece of Haruo to understand it better. “Care to add your commentary about the situation?”

“No.”

Raising an eyebrow, Teris seemed a little surprised by the refusal. “If an understanding is to be reached multiple perspectives are required. These reports are meaningless.”

While hardly a persuasive agreement, nothing changed Haruo’s decision. “Abstain.” It was nothing he planned to talk about. It was a pointless pursuit.

“So you’re going to keep quiet on how you managed to defeat twenty Agents without fighting.” Teris had some thought about the subject. It gave him a few pieces to work on a theory, but a theory only went so far until it needed to be tested. The one to test it stood before him, refusing him. “I can glean a little from their statements. Whatever happened then you did so in such a way that no one wishes to talk about it or is unable to talk about it. Unless you have other powers outside of your animals, I find the latter an impossibility. I can’t rule anything out yet. I doubt you’ve shown the full potential of your power yet.”

There was one thing Teris was correct about. Haruo felt certain that his power wasn’t at its maximum yet. However, he didn’t know how powerful it could be or what he needed to do to be able to reach that strength. The whole thing was as foreign as Atlantis. Powers, super humans should have been something of fiction left to authors, yet it became reality. A reality that swallowed him up. “So…”

“So I want to see your power in action. Oh sure, I’ve got orders to capture or kill you for suspicion of rebellion and colluding with Eudokia. But that’s only a secondary matter. You’ve got something interesting inside of your body. That’s far more compelling than the orders.”

The direction and reveal of Teris true motives didn’t surprise Haruo much. From the start, it was one of the possibilities that Haruo concluded based on his initial reactions. It should be a positive thing for him, however Haruo felt certain it was not so simple. “No fighting?”

“Now, I didn’t say anything about that. Though it’s going to depend on what you can tell me. Practical experience is more useful.”

Unfortunately, there was little that Haruo could answer. He knew a little about his power, but it still remained beyond his understanding. “I can’t answer.”

“As I would expect. Revealing your secrets would open up weaknesses for me to exploit. This is still a combat situation for you. So it would only invite disaster. Hence why this’ll come down to fighting. It’ll be the only way to satisfy both of us.”

“I don’t have the answers you want. I don’t know why it works, just that it does.”

“You can cover yourself up as much as you want, but there’s no need to pretend.”

“I’ve run tests. I know how to make it work, but the reasons are beyond me.”

Teris lifted his hand to his chin in thought. ‘There seems to be something of a truth to what he says. Is it actually possible?’ Even true, it didn’t stop Teris’ goal. “No matter, I’ll figure out how it works for you.”

“I find it unlikely.” If he couldn’t figure it out from testing his body, it seemed unlikely a stranger would have better luck. His power didn’t make any sense. There was nothing logical about the way his power worked. Haruo couldn’t understand it.

Chapter 251 – Reluctant Beast

“Sounds like a challenge. That’s why you seemed interesting. I like a tough problem.” The white uniform disappeared in place of a white lab coat along with a simple tan leather vest and shirt. An orderly appearance replaced the stock one. Already tall, even more so next to Haruo, the length of the coat seemed to make him stretch in length further.

Even though it was a clear sign of intent, Haruo took no action. ‘It’s come down to a fight again. This is not why I came.’ He stared over at Teris to get a read on his stance, one that was different from others. It wasn’t very martial related like he saw from others. “I’ve no reason to fight.”

“You do seem more like the tag along type from the way I saw you in your group. And judging from your lack of engagements, but it’s going to happen. I want to see your power at work and you need to defend yourself.”

“No.”

“Your physical body won’t be able to take the sorts of things I’ve got. You will need to do more than just stand there.”

‘There’s no convincing him.’ Still unmotivated, Haruo waited for Teris to make an action. Reaction was better in his situation, especially since he didn’t know what the man could do.

A glass vial containing a clear liquid popped up from seemingly under Teris’ coat sleeve. He balanced it atop his index finger with effortless ease, likely with no effort thanks to his power. “If you’re going to be like that. I’ll just have to show you that you need to be more accommodating.” Twirling his finger around the base of the vial like it was glued to his finger, the contents seemed to be stirred up in prep. He tossed it once he felt things were ready.

Before it even hit the ground, a light came from inside the glass reacting to the chemicals. It burst open into a violent explosion just a meter away from Haruo. Despite the blast, Haruo made no move to do anything about it. Smoke and a strange blue substance surrounded the air around him. A lack of any sort of response from Haruo made it clear that the results were poor.

Once the cover from the explosion blew away, Teris got a better look at Haruo. It confirmed everything that he speculated from the early test results. “A sturdy body on top of your strange power. I see why you’ve resisted the need to fight.” Producing two vials this time, he seemed to have a new plan. “Just as a warning, this is going to amplify the power of that explosive you just witnessed tenfold. You’ll need to do something more than just stand there.”

Bluffs didn’t seem in his nature, something Haruo judged. It didn’t change what he knew that Teris aimed to achieve, while Haruo remained unwilling to cave. ‘I’ll still survive a blast like that, but I wouldn’t come out unscathed like before. I’ll need to do something.’

The amount of time he had to come up with a plan ran out fast. His next attack already was in motion towards him. Haruo stared at the two vials, one clear like before and the other purplish. An easy identification, but Teris had no intention of hiding it. He just wanted to force Haruo’s hand, killing him would have ended what would be interesting.

An explosion went off again, completely covering Haruo. Yet it didn’t seem as intense as the last. Teris noticed immediately and narrowed his eyes to examine the situation. ‘What was that I saw? A blur of something…’ Just before it blew up, a part of Haruo’s body blurred in his eyes, his arm. “So you prevented my enhancing agent from mixing with the explosive agent. Stubborn still.”

Haruo lifted his left hand up to reveal the protected purple liquid. It remained intact from the blast, hence unable to add to the blast. “Your explosive agent consumes the liquid in here acting as a catalyst that it feeds on to exponentially increase the rate of the compound’s heating and energy artificially.”

Teris clapped his hands, actually pleased with the quick deduction. “A fellow intellectual. You will be a very interesting one indeed.” Popping up from his sleeve again, as though the man was a magician, a yellow hued liquid appeared in a similarly shaped vial. “This time it’s mixed together. So you won’t be able to avoid it this time with your sleight of hand. Though it’s more unstable mixed and the results are actually less even and predictable, I don’t prefer it like this. Lacks the sort of elegance.”

‘Another attempt, but if it is as unstable as he says, it could be very bad. An uneven consumption and release of energy is going to make some areas weaker and others far more powerful.’ Considering the odds he dealt with didn’t make Haruo secure in his position. It escalated in the worst way possible.

There was no hesitation in its use. Teris tossed it stirred up at Haruo with some hopeful expectations. Unable to prevent it, the blast went off two meters away from Haruo, a case of its unstable properties. Unstable or not, the explosion was no less than what it was talked up to be. It completely covered up Haruo and ripped into the grass taking out random chunks to toss as debris.

However, when the smoke cleared Haruo remained unharmed and no closer to summoning its animals. It didn’t mean Teris was without answers. His eyes quickly locked in on a strange arc carved deeply through the earth. ‘So you used your leg strength to force enough earth up with near equal force to counter the blast. It rendered it weak enough for you to just take the rest unguarded.’

Some frustration would be natural for Teris, but it just made him think even more. He wanted to see this animal power in person. He needed to analyze it himself. All the reports were done with too little information and unreliable. Not until he saw it could he grasp it. Something unscientific like spirits was a curiosity he normally ignored.

Opening his lab coat, a quick peek beneath it revealed a wealth of thin vials stored on loops. Retrieving a single small vial, no larger than a needle, the significance of it couldn’t be understated. Teris glanced over at Haruo, but his stoic expression prevented anything to read from him. However, he knew from the previous displays that Haruo would immediately understand the importance.

Another of the usual vials popped up in his hand as an accompaniment. He tossed them into the air far beyond Haruo, where it exploded. The size was about the same as the first, but it didn’t seem to be the important part.

Watching the fallout from the blast, Haruo started to deduce the intent. ‘The blast was meant as a transport for the smaller compound he pulled out. Likely it needs to be spread through the air to be effective. Could be a poison, but that would defeat his purpose. But it needed to be distributed as an aerosol.’ The limited information he had could only produce theories. He had to wait for what happened and gamble that it wasn’t something dangerous to him.

Suddenly his stance slipped and he forced himself to readjust his footing. ‘The ground’s uneven, almost soft…’ He dropped his sight to the earth, realizing whatever Teris released into the air must have started to have its effect. His foot slipped again. He had trouble keeping his balance. ‘Liquefaction?’ Another second later his foot pushed through the earth. It was as though he fell in quicksand with it swallowing him up too quickly to react. Further movements just made it worse.

Teris walked up to Haruo putting one of his vials near the edge of the liquefied ground. It was of a different color again, a pale blue. “This explosive is quite a bit more powerful than the other I used alone, but it’s quite a bit more stable. Easy for transport.” He dropped down another of the purple enhancing compounds, followed by a final clear vial. “See this one? It’s an acid, powerful enough to melt this glass as you can see. I use it as a timer. You’ve got about thirty seconds before the acid is released and triggers the others.”

Standing up and walking away to a safe distance, the whole thing played out so casually. It was all just an experiment, for science. “You’ve got twenty seconds now. I’d suggest you make your decision soon on using your power.”

Haruo stared at the three containers. All out of his reach, nothing could be done to stop them. Not with him stuck in the sinkhole. ‘Looks like he found a way to corner me…’ The options finally ran out. He would be forced to use his animals. It wasn’t the way he would have preferred, but he couldn’t let himself die.

A bright light broke through parts of the earth. It grew stronger as the earth seemed to mound and rise.

Time ran out.

Bright red blasted out over the area throwing chunks of earth and waves of mud. Smoke covered over the entire area from the blast. It cut out everything with shattering silence.

Thinning clouds allowed a faint white light to bleed through. It took on further shape as the smoke dissipated. The form was large and wide, but became clear quickly through pockets of the clouds. A lion’s head bathed in white light revealed itself. Seated on its back, Haruo, dirtied from the experience in the liquefied earth, unharmed still.

“Now we can begin,” Teris remarked with excitement.