"Well, let's just get this over with. Let's not wait any longer. If you want to fight, you can do it now," said Norichi.
Just as he said that, Norichi felt the boy in the glove's fingers almost dig into his eyes, but Norichi grabbed his hand just as the fingers were about to pierce his eyes and then pushed him away.
"You need more ambition," said Norichi.
"Shit," thought the man in the gloves.
"Your strength is only in those fingers, isn't it?" asked Norichi.
"What? Just that? That's all you're asking about?" thought the man in the gloves.
"You want the money? Have more ambition. Kill me right now—much more than you want," said Norichi, grabbing the man's gloved hands.
"Kill me right now with these fingers. If you have the ambition, you can do it. Go ahead, kill me as much as you want," said Norichi, pointing the man's fingers at his neck.
"Do it!" said Norichi fearlessly, wanting nothing more than to die.
"What, what, what!" thought the man, overcome by the fear he now felt.
"Why, why are my legs shaking so much? Is this fear?" the man thought further, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the situation.
"Hey, what did I tell you? Ten seconds to kill me, or have you lost your purpose for coming here?" said Norichi.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" the man shouted in desperation.
"I see, you've lost your will, haven't you?" asked Norichi.
Norichi moved his hands away from the man and then pulled a gun from his pocket. "Well, how about this? People always try to save themselves when they're about to die," said Norichi.
"Then tell me what you'll do now that you're about to die," said Norichi coldly, pointing the gun at his head.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! HA!" the worried man screamed uncontrollably.
"Just defend yourself. That's all there is to it. There's nothing else you can do," said Norichi.
"I… I… can't… can't… do it," said the frightened man.
"My legs are shaking so much—why is this happening? This guy is terrifying just to look at," the man thought.
"Where does he get such an imposing presence that's so scary?" said the man, falling backward because his legs were shaking so much they finally gave out.
"Hey, I told you to defend yourself. Wasn't that clear? If you don't kill me now, you'll die right here, right now," said Norichi.
"But what… what is this guy thinking?" the man thought.
"I already told you: defend yourself or die," said Norichi in a colder tone, about to pull the trigger.
"Ah… ah… please wait," the man said, begging.
"I don't… I don't. I'm really focused on this—just give me more time," said the man desperately.
"I see, so that's how it is, isn't it?" said Norichi.
Norichi pulled the trigger and shot the man in the head, killing him instantly. "In the end, you didn't have enough ambition to kill me," said Norichi.
"You were just looking for fame or maybe money, but you didn't have the guts to take a life for it, did you?" said Norichi.
"You could have killed the others at that mall, but you were just a coward—when faced with someone strong, you're nothing more than vile scum," said Norichi.
"Well, there's one of you left. I hope you'll put up a better fight than these idiots," said Norichi.
Tsurugi was the first to charge in, activating his ability. He launched a spinning kick at Nichiro, who took it square in the head. Norichi bled from the head, but he didn't fall; he simply returned the kick.
He kicked him in the stomach, but that was exactly what Tsurugi was expecting; he used Norichi's leg as leverage to launch a knee strike at his head that could kill him.
The knee is about to hit Norichi, and then it appears to make contact, but something strange happens that Sifon and Ocho notice: it turns out that Norichi took the blow on his right shoulder, while Tsurugi received a kick from Norichi from below, striking him in the chin.
That upward kick causes Tsurugi to stagger back from the impact; he bleeds from the mouth and falls to the ground.—What happened? But he was fine a minute ago; I was about to kill him.—Tsurugi thought, a little dazed.
"That always happens all the time, doesn't it?" Norichi whispered.
The moment Tsurugi fell to the ground, Sifon had moved and positioned himself behind Norichi, aiming at his head. Sifon fired and hit Norichi, but something strange happened: it looked like he'd hit him, but in reality he hadn't—it was just an afterimage.
In fact, Norichi was behind Sifon, and when Sifon turned around, Norichi was watching him. Sifon quickly raised his arm and fired his gun at Norichi's head, but Norichi, as if by reflex, dodged the bullet and grabbed Sifon's arm—the one holding the gun—while elbowing him with his other arm.
Sifon was a little dazed but decided to heighten his senses a bit more, this time increasing his perception. Sifon watched Norichi, and after Norichi moved—at a normal speed—he threw a punch.
Sifon dodges and counters with a blow to the stomach that makes Norichi spit out saliva. Norichi merely shifts his body slightly, and Sifon pulls out a dagger hidden under his sleeve and slashes Norichi's throat.
But the strange thing is that it was another afterimage, and Siphon feels something grab his arm. It was Norichi, who throws a punch that Siphon dodges and counters with an elbow to the chin. Norichi doesn't fall or seem dazed by the blow to the chin, but he steps back slightly.
Norichi throws a punch, which Sifon dodges again with ease. Norichi notices something strange: he realizes that Sifon is dodging him purely out of reflex.
Narrator.—To everyone else, the speed will seem normal, but thanks to his heightened perception, Sifon sees everything in slow motion—as if those few seconds of movement took 50 or 30 seconds.—said the narrator.
Narrator.—But for Siphon, the movement actually took about 2 or 3 minutes to complete. Because of that, he only sees things slowly, but his body doesn't react at the same time—only his vision does, while his body takes longer to react at that same speed.—said the narrator.
Narrator.—But that's why, at the same time, Siphon also increased his sense of reflex; that sense is commonly known as a reflex action or simply a reflex.—said the narrator.
Narrator.—It is an automatic, immediate, and involuntary response of the body to a stimulus, such as pulling your hand away when touching something hot, without the brain consciously processing the action before executing it.—said the narrator, continuing with the explanation.
Narrator.—What Sifon does is simply heighten that sense in his body so that, at the same time, his perception is heightened, allowing him to react while everything appears in slow motion.—said the narrator.
Narrator.—The only problem is the mental strain. Sifon isn't used to pushing himself to that limit, since no one had ever pushed him to do that before, and Norichi is the first to have forced Sifon to resort to this. And since he isn't used to it, it doesn't seem to be helping him much in this fight.—said the narrator.
In the fight, Sifon is dodging Norichi's slashes with a knife he pulled from a knife sheath on his leg, but the moment Sifon dodges, he feels something as if his brain is in a daze.
Ocho and Tsurugi (who had gotten up off the ground) pay a little attention to Sifon and see that something is happening to him. The moment Sifon stepped back, his nose started bleeding because his brain is under a bit of mental strain due to his ability.
"An internal attack or something," Ocho and Tsurugi thought at the same time upon seeing Sifon bleed.
Sifon feels that he's straining his mind too much, so he decides to lower the pressure of his ability slightly to keep from collapsing and suffering a hemorrhage, but that causes Norichi to pause for a moment.
"You seem to have a problem with your body, don't you?" Norichi asked.
"Damn, he noticed," Siphon thought.
Just as Norichi advanced with more pressure toward Siphon, Ocho moved, charging at Norichi, and the two ended up crashing into a wall. But Ocho stopped and, while holding him trapped, began punching him in the face.
Norichi bleeds from the blows, but then Ocho starts elbowing him in the face, and just as Norichi seems to be losing consciousness, something happens: in an instant, as if his body were moving super fast—as if it were happening without him realizing it—he breaks free from Ocho.
He then kicks him in the face, followed by a series of punches to the stomach and face; one of those blows causes Ocho's nose to bleed, and then he lands a spinning kick straight to the abdomen.
Ocho staggers back and falls to the ground, spitting blood, but he gets up quickly. Knowing he can't let Norichi get a chance, Ocho charges back at him, ramming into him, and they crash into the wall again, but this time they end up destroying it—and since part of the room was made of glass,
They break through the floor, and both Ocho and Norichi fall from the floor to the level below them, but just as they fall, a large piece of glass falls on them from some metal beams that were there.
Norichi lands right where he fell and is about to be impaled by the glass. "I wonder what good there is in the world these days," Norichi thought, those being his last words.
But something happened out of nowhere. Norichi suddenly opened his eyes wide in surprise, and Ocho saw it. He saw how, for a moment, Norichi's pupils turned green. Norichi, as always, as if on autopilot, dodged the glass.
What he did was grab onto another bar and do a somersault, changing his trajectory and thus dodging the glass. This left Ocho confused, since he thought Norichi was trying to kill himself.
Norichi and Ocho crash to the floor on this lower level. Tsurugi and Sifon followed them and landed more safely on the ground. Norichi gets up, and tears begin to stream down his face.