KIRAIDA

# **KIRAIDA**

## **CHAPTER 1 — BIO MACHINE**

The accident had no villain.

That was the first cruelty.

No emperor pushed a button. No machine revolted. No human government mistook a warning for an attack. There would be no trial afterward, no grave with the responsible name carved into it, no survivor pointing at the sky and saying:

*That thing did this to us.*

Two planets simply arrived at the same place.

One carried blood.

The other carried metal.

For longer than either civilization could properly remember, the human world had lived beneath weather.

Rain polished its windows. Wind bullied trees into shapes no architect would have approved. Children grew taller beside doorframes covered in pencil marks. Roads cracked. Teeth cracked. Promises cracked much faster.

Its people made machines because bodies were inconvenient.

Bodies became hungry.

Bodies became tired.

Bodies became old.

Machines could lift what backs could not. Machines could remember numbers no tired mind wanted. Machines could cross distances while the humans inside complained about how long the distance was taking.

The humans called this progress.

Then they repaired the machines because machines were inconvenient too.

Across an impossible distance, another planet had solved the inconvenience differently.

There were no forests on the metal world.

There were structures that occupied the places forests might have occupied, but none needed sunlight in the old biological sense. Vast mechanical plains adjusted themselves according to stress. Towers altered their internal architecture when storms became inefficient. Damaged systems diagnosed damage before replacement units arrived.

Nothing there was *decorated* with metal.

Metal was the geography.

A continent could move a fraction of a degree because another continent had calculated the benefit.

The world did not sleep.

It reduced output.

It did not panic.

It corrected.

It did not love its continued existence.

It continued.

Neither world knew the other existed.

The humans had telescopes pointed in the wrong directions.

The machines possessed measurements built from information that had never contained humanity.

If either side had been given a warning, perhaps the warning would have changed nothing.

Or perhaps it would have changed everything.

Nobody would ever know.

The human planet was halfway through an ordinary day when the sky became incorrect.

Children saw it first because children were looking up.

Adults were looking at screens, streets, food, clocks, each other.

The new object swallowed blue.

At first, people thought moon.

Then asteroid.

Then something too large for either word to be useful.

On the metal world, calculations detected a mass that should not have been present.

Trajectory systems recalculated.

Then recalculated again.

The answer remained unacceptable.

Systems checked one another for failure.

They found none.

Across the human planet, sirens finally began.

They were late.

Across the metal planet, structures shifted into defensive arrangements.

They were useless.

For one moment, both civilizations performed perfectly reasonable actions.

Then the distance between their worlds became zero.

The first atmosphere entered the second.

Clouds became incandescent.

Metal surfaces larger than countries warped before impact had technically finished beginning.

Human oceans rose.

Not in waves.

Entire oceans lifted as gravity changed its mind about which world they belonged to.

The planets touched.

Mountains broke before the sound could exist.

Cities flattened beneath forces that did not know they were cities.

A mechanical ridge pierced an ocean and converted enough water into steam to erase the coastline that had once given that ocean a name.

A hospital broke free of its foundations.

For less than a second it remained recognizable as a hospital.

Beds.

Walls.

A red sign.

A child's drawing taped beside a doorway.

Then a segment of the other planet passed through it.

The drawing became atoms among machinery.

On the metal world, billions of coordinated processes failed simultaneously.

No scream followed.

That world had never needed one.

The human world provided enough for both.

Then even screaming became impossible.

The planets drove into each other.

Stone entered metal.

Metal entered flesh.

Water entered reactors.

Bone entered mechanisms that had no category for bone.

The distinction between debris and terrain disappeared.

Continents folded inward.

The combined mass glowed.

For a fraction of time too small for grief, both worlds existed as one object.

Then the object tore itself apart.

Light filled the region.

Fragments launched outward.

The Human Planet ended.

The Metal Planet ended.

History lost almost everyone qualified to complain about it.

Space accepted the wreckage without comment.

And deep inside the expanding ruin, where human matter and machine structure had been crushed together under pressures neither world had been designed to survive—

something refused to finish dying.

---

It began with movement.

Small enough to be mistaken for debris settling.

A length of metal bent.

A strip of tissue contracted around it.

The metal should have cut through.

Instead, it shifted.

The tissue should have failed.

Instead, it changed shape.

There had been mechanisms on the dead world capable of repairing other mechanisms. There had been bodies on the dead world capable of healing wounds.

This was neither process.

Nothing was repairing anything.

There was nothing original left to repair.

A structure was forming that had never existed before.

Cells divided where cells should not have survived.

Mechanical material rearranged without instructions from any surviving network.

A line appeared.

Bent.

Became a finger.

Another.

Five.

The hand closed around nothing.

Opened.

Closed again.

A wrist followed.

Then an arm.

The proportions were wrong for infancy.

Too large.

Too complete.

A shoulder pushed free of the fused wreckage.

Skin covered it, though what moved beneath the skin did not resemble a purely human skeleton.

A chest expanded from an instinct that expected air.

There was almost none.

The chest stopped.

Something else continued.

A heart beat once.

A mechanical rhythm answered from somewhere it would have been incorrect to call beside it.

The rhythms disagreed.

Then synchronized for half a second.

Then disagreed differently.

A head emerged last.

Darkness had no reason to be kind to the face.

It looked human anyway.

That made it worse.

His eyes remained closed as the wreckage rotated around him.

One foot came free.

Then the other.

He drifted from the remains of two planets with the proportions of a grown man and the age of a moment.

Six feet eleven inches of result.

No womb.

No assembly line.

No designer proud enough to sign his work.

His eyes opened.

The universe entered them.

Fire glowed across distant fragments.

Bodies moved among machine parts.

A tower rotated slowly through the remains of a forest.

Ice formed where pieces of an ocean had escaped into vacuum.

A human face passed at a distance too great to recognize.

A metal arm followed.

The newborn watched both.

Something inside him felt.

Something inside him did not.

The difference did not divide him into two minds.

There was only one watcher.

One existence.

One him.

Emotion arrived first as pressure.

Heat without temperature.

The world outside him was ruined, but he possessed no memory of an unruined world, so grief had nowhere to begin.

Fear required something precious to lose.

He had nothing.

Curiosity came close.

It touched the edge of his mind.

Something stronger crushed it.

His lips moved.

No air waited to carry the sound.

That did not stop the word from being his first.

**"Abhorrence."**

He watched the dead planets continue drifting apart.

The expression on his face changed.

Nothing dramatic.

A slight narrowing of the eyes.

Reality had introduced itself.

Kokoronowarui hated it.

---

He tried to stand.

There was nowhere to do it.

His right foot pushed downward and found no ground, but his body obeyed the old expectation anyway. His leg extended. His torso tilted. One arm moved automatically to correct balance.

The correction made things worse.

He began rotating.

Slowly.

The debris field revolved around his vision.

A broken building.

Stars.

A human body.

Metal.

Stars.

Ice.

Building again.

He moved his arms harder.

His rotation accelerated.

His jaw tightened.

The response came from somewhere ancient in the flesh that had become him: when motion is wrong, fight motion.

His machinery offered no frustration.

It registered the result.

Kokoronowarui moved one arm again.

Less.

His rotation changed.

Again.

Different angle.

The stars crossed his vision more slowly.

His left hand moved.

His body rolled along another axis.

Wrong.

He corrected.

Wrong by less.

Again.

By the ninth attempt, his movements had become smaller.

By the nineteenth, he stopped searching for a floor.

He stared at his hands.

Opened them.

Closed them.

The fingers obeyed.

He turned one palm toward the stars.

Turned it back.

The movement was ordinary.

The speed was not extraordinary.

Nothing exploded.

No hidden cosmic inheritance announced itself.

Kokoronowarui existed for several minutes before he achieved anything more impressive than learning not to tumble like garbage.

He hated those minutes.

That helped.

Failure stuck in him.

The motions that wasted effort became offensive.

The corrections remained.

Soon he could turn deliberately.

Not fly.

Not yet.

He could choose which direction his face pointed, which was a small victory over a universe he had already decided deserved none.

Something drifted near him.

A rectangular plate of machine alloy.

He reached.

Missed.

The plate continued past.

His eyes followed it.

He stretched farther.

His fingers brushed the edge and pushed it away.

Kokoronowarui stared.

The object had escaped him twice.

A pulse of feeling sharpened his face.

He moved after it.

Badly.

A floating piece of human concrete struck his thigh as he passed.

His body rotated.

The plate moved farther away.

His mouth tightened.

He ignored the concrete.

Adjusted.

Reached.

Missed by less.

Again.

His hand closed around the plate.

This time he did not let go.

For several seconds he simply held it.

He had wanted something.

Then he had obtained it.

The result produced no satisfaction large enough to justify the effort.

He hated that too.

He struck the plate.

The impact sent both him and the metal moving in opposite directions.

His knuckles hurt.

He looked at them.

A faint redness appeared.

He struck again.

The second blow landed poorly.

His wrist bent.

Pain flashed.

He struck a third time.

Cleaner.

Fourth.

The plate dented.

He stopped.

His eyes moved from the dent to his hand.

Then back.

His next punch landed near the same place.

The dent deepened.

He adjusted the angle.

Again.

The plate folded slightly along its weakened center.

Kokoronowarui turned it over.

He could have continued.

Instead, he released it.

It floated away.

He watched it go with the same intensity he had used to catch it.

Then turned in the opposite direction.

No celebration.

No lesson spoken aloud.

The machine plate carried the evidence for him.

Five uneven dents.

One deeper than the others.

The last strike had been the best.

---

A thin red line opened across his knuckle.

Blood left the skin.

A bead separated and became a sphere.

Kokoronowarui watched part of himself float away.

His attention sharpened immediately.

He reached and touched the droplet.

It broke across his fingertip.

Red spread along the skin.

He rubbed finger against thumb.

Texture.

Temperature.

Loss.

The wound throbbed.

His body had already begun narrowing vessels around it.

The process was imperfect.

His hand had no patience for perfection.

He closed the fist.

Pain increased.

Opened it.

Less.

Closed it again.

Pain.

Again.

Again.

Not because repetition was pleasant.

Because the difference interested something in him.

The fifth closure was slower.

The sixth changed the position of the thumb.

Less pain.

The seventh returned to the painful position.

His eyes narrowed.

He had deliberately chosen worse.

There was no efficiency in that.

His machine nature registered the waste.

His living nature disliked being told what to do by a process that had no voice.

The fist closed painfully once more.

Kokoronowarui stared at it.

Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth moved.

Not a smile.

Almost the biological memory of one.

It vanished before it became anything.

He hated that it had appeared.

He hated that it had disappeared.

His expression settled.

The wound continued closing whether he approved or not.

---

The first thing that nearly killed him was a wall.

Not a warrior.

Not a god.

Not a monster waiting among the remains.

A wall.

It had once belonged to the Metal Planet.

Its original purpose was impossible to tell from what remained: an enormous black segment of layered structure, torn free at both ends, tumbling through the debris field without guidance.

Kokoronowarui did not hear it.

There was almost nothing to hear.

He turned before he saw the whole thing.

His body reacted to a change he could not yet name.

The skin along his neck tightened.

His gaze snapped left.

The wall occupied half his vision.

He moved.

Too late.

The structure struck him.

His left shoulder took the first impact.

Bone failed.

Metal beneath the bone did something different and failed a moment later.

The wall carried him through a storm of smaller debris.

His back struck stone.

His head snapped sideways.

A broken mechanical rod pierced the flesh above his hip.

The wall continued.

Kokoronowarui vanished beneath it.

The debris field did not pause.

A human transport rotated past.

Several frozen trees followed.

The wall spun slowly after impact.

Nothing moved underneath.

Five seconds.

Ten.

Twenty.

A hand appeared around the wall's edge.

The fingers closed.

Released.

Closed again.

Kokoronowarui pulled.

Nothing.

His left arm hung at an angle his body recognized as unacceptable.

He tried to use it anyway.

Pain.

No useful force.

His right hand changed position.

Pulled.

The wall shifted less than a centimeter.

His ribs objected.

His vision pulsed dark.

Biological systems flooded themselves with emergency chemistry.

Blood moved away from places that could wait.

Muscle recruited beyond comfortable levels.

Pain became simultaneously louder and less important.

The response was ugly.

A body's panic without the emotion of panic.

Kokoronowarui's machinery received the chaos.

Some of it was waste.

Some was useful.

His right foot found a notch in the wall.

He pushed.

Too much force escaped sideways.

Nothing.

Again.

His hip changed.

Again.

His heel moved three centimeters.

Again.

This time the force traveled through him more cleanly.

The wall shifted.

His shoulder screamed.

His face twisted.

Hatred flooded the living portions of him with a purity so complete that it almost resembled purpose.

The machine portions did not hate the wall.

They improved the movement.

Kokoronowarui pushed again.

The wall rolled.

Not far.

Far enough.

His torso slid free.

The rod tore out of his side.

Blood followed.

He grabbed the edge of the wall before momentum could separate them.

For a moment he remained attached to the thing that had crushed him.

One eye was swollen.

His left arm useless.

A strip of skin along his ribs had opened enough to reveal a dark internal structure that looked metallic until it flexed with the tissue around it.

Kokoronowarui stared at the wall.

He could have let go.

Instead he pulled himself closer.

The right fist rose.

He punched it.

The strike barely marked the surface.

Again.

His injured body did not have enough leverage.

Again.

The wall rotated.

Again.

His knuckles reopened.

He stopped.

The expression on his face became empty.

No anger.

No satisfaction.

No despair.

He examined the surface.

His eyes followed the layers.

A fracture created during the planetary collision ran near one edge.

He placed his fingers inside it.

Pulled.

The material resisted.

His foot braced against another broken section.

Different angle.

Pull.

The fracture widened.

His face changed again.

Hatred returned.

He pulled until a length of metal snapped free.

The broken strip rotated between them.

Kokoronowarui released the wall.

He kept the strip.

A useless trophy.

Perhaps.

He looked at it for three seconds.

Then threw it away harder than necessary.

The strip disappeared into darkness.

Kokoronowarui watched it until his damaged eye could no longer separate it from the stars.

His body had nearly stopped functioning.

It had not.

That was enough information for now.

---

He fixed the shoulder badly.

There was no elegant way to describe it.

He grabbed his own forearm, positioned the limb, and forced the joint toward somewhere less wrong.

The first attempt failed.

The second made it worse.

His body responded with such violent pain that his jaw opened.

No sound came.

The third attempt worked.

Mostly.

He remained still afterward.

Stress chemistry stayed in his blood longer than the immediate danger required.

His heart struck harder.

Muscles remained primed.

Human biology was throwing resources at a problem that had already changed.

Kokoronowarui moved his right arm.

Fast.

Stopped.

Again.

The motion was stronger than before the impact.

Sloppy.

Again.

Cleaner.

The mechanical structures inside him began treating the biological overreaction as available material.

Extra output was extra output.

Waste could be removed.

He moved.

Again.

Again.

Then stopped before repetition became the point rather than the tool.

His damaged left hand twitched.

Not useful yet.

He looked at it.

No disappointment.

No hope.

The limb was damaged.

Therefore it was damaged.

Kokoronowarui pushed away from the wall and continued through the wreckage.

The first movement after nearly being crushed was stronger than the last movement before it.

He did not know enough to find that strange.

---

He encountered death everywhere.

A woman floated with both hands closed around something no longer there.

Kokoronowarui stopped near her.

Her eyes were open.

He looked into them.

Nothing looked back.

His biological instincts recognized enough.

Dead.

He did not know her.

She had never held him.

Never harmed him.

Never spoken his name.

He did not have a name yet.

Kokoronowarui reached toward her face.

His fingers stopped before contact.

He moved past her.

Then stopped.

Turned.

Returned.

He touched her forehead.

Cold.

He examined the skin.

Her body had once done many of the things his body did.

Now it did none of them.

No hatred came from her.

No fear.

No rejection.

Nothing.

Kokoronowarui's expression tightened.

He pushed the corpse away.

Hard.

The woman rotated into the darkness.

His gaze followed.

Life had been incapable of asking whether he wanted it.

Death had taken away the possibility of response.

He hated both arrangements.

A small object floated near where the woman had been.

A photograph.

Bent.

A family stood together beneath a bright sky.

Four people.

Two adults.

Two children.

All smiling toward whoever held the camera.

Kokoronowarui caught it.

He examined each face.

The concept was almost available to him.

Together.

Connection.

Something passed through the emotional side of him.

Not longing.

The emotion seemed to arrive without a proper name.

His fingers crushed the photograph.

The machine side had no reason to preserve it.

The human side hated what it suggested.

He released the remains.

A torn half containing one smiling child stuck briefly against his wrist.

Kokoronowarui stared at it.

He could have brushed it away.

He did not.

For nearly a minute, the fragment remained attached to him as he moved.

Then he noticed it again.

His face hardened.

He peeled it off.

He did not destroy it.

He let it float.

Why?

There was nobody to answer.

That included him.

---

Hours passed.

He learned without calling it learning.

His body stopped making the same mistakes at the same rate.

Movement through open space became less embarrassing.

When he pushed from debris, less energy vanished into useless rotation.

When his damaged shoulder limited one motion, the rest of his body reorganized around the weakness.

The shoulder slowly repaired.

The repair was biological.

The protection around it was not entirely so.

Human flesh produced imperfect solutions.

Mechanical structures refined the useful ones.

Then biology produced another mistake.

Then another possibility.

Kokoronowarui did not become dramatically stronger every minute.

Sometimes improvement was almost insulting in its smallness.

A better angle.

A faster recognition.

One unnecessary motion removed.

A muscle recruited sooner.

A breath not attempted when breathing could accomplish nothing.

His existence accumulated tiny corrections.

He hated how many had been necessary.

---

A light blinked among the wreckage.

Once.

Darkness.

Again.

Blue.

Kokoronowarui turned.

The light belonged to a surviving machine.

A cylindrical unit partially crushed along one side, perhaps three meters long. Several jointed structures remained folded against its body. One sensor tracked the debris field with uneven movements.

The blue light blinked.

Kokoronowarui approached.

The sensor stopped.

Turned.

Found him.

The machine scanned.

Its surviving systems compared shape.

Human.

A classification began.

Then additional readings returned.

The process stalled.

Scanned again.

Human.

Mechanical.

Biological.

Artificial.

The blue light flickered rapidly.

Kokoronowarui watched.

A compartment opened along the machine's side.

He tilted his head.

Inside, something charged.

Before the weapon moved fully into position, Kokoronowarui was already shifting.

The industrial projectile fired.

It clipped his upper leg instead of entering his torso.

He spun.

The machine tracked.

Kokoronowarui's face changed.

The weapon began charging again.

He moved toward it.

Second shot.

His body twisted before the discharge.

The projectile missed.

Barely.

The machine adjusted.

Kokoronowarui reached it.

His good hand struck the weapon housing.

The metal did not break.

The impact changed the cylinder's rotation.

He grabbed one folded joint.

Pulled.

The machine's other arm unfolded and hit him across the face.

His nose broke.

He drifted backward.

Blood spread into tiny spheres.

Kokoronowarui touched his nose.

Looked at the blood.

Looked at the machine.

The blue light blinked.

He moved toward it again.

No roar.

No declaration.

The machine prepared another shot.

Kokoronowarui did something stranger.

He stopped.

The weapon fired.

He bent at the last moment and allowed the projectile to pass above his shoulder.

Then he continued forward.

The machine attempted to recalculate.

He grabbed the weapon housing with both hands, damaged shoulder and all.

Pulled.

Electricity jumped through his fingers.

His muscles locked.

The human response jerked violently.

The machine response inside him did not cancel it.

It redirected what it could.

Kokoronowarui's grip changed.

The current passed differently.

Still painful.

Less disruptive.

He pulled again.

The housing tore free.

The blue light flashed.

An internal mechanism exposed itself.

Kokoronowarui drove his fist into it.

Once.

His knuckles split.

Twice.

The mechanism deformed.

Three times.

The light went dark.

He drew back for another strike.

Stopped.

The machine floated silently.

Kokoronowarui stared.

No threat.

No resistance.

Nothing.

He waited.

The machine remained dead.

His fist lowered.

The victory irritated him more than the fight had.

He struck the dead machine once anyway.

Then turned away.

Behind him, the blue light flickered.

One weak pulse.

Kokoronowarui stopped instantly.

He looked back.

The light disappeared again.

His expression changed.

He returned.

Placed one hand against the machine.

Waited.

No pulse.

He could have destroyed it completely.

Instead he pushed it away.

The cylinder drifted toward the wreckage.

Kokoronowarui watched.

His behavior had no obvious efficiency.

No obvious mercy either.

He hated the machine.

Perhaps leaving it almost functional was crueler.

Perhaps he wanted it to wake.

Perhaps the choice meant nothing.

The cylinder disappeared among the ruins without giving him an answer.

Kokoronowarui continued.

---

The debris thinned.

Stars became easier to see.

He had been born in destruction, so emptiness was the first landscape he learned intact.

He disliked it.

There was too much room for things to remain far away.

His senses stretched through a world with almost no sound.

Motion mattered.

Heat mattered.

Changes mattered.

Threat sometimes announced itself before the object causing it became obvious.

A rock the size of a vehicle entered his path.

Kokoronowarui shifted long before collision.

A ruptured machine vented superheated material from behind a broken panel.

His gaze snapped toward the opening before the burst came.

He moved clear.

Not precognition as another creature might one day define it.

Something more bodily.

He knew the beginning of an action before the action finished becoming itself.

A shoulder moving.

A mechanism charging.

Pressure changing.

Intent, perhaps, when something living eventually supplied it.

The distinction would matter later.

Now, there was no one to test it.

Space remained a patient teacher.

Kokoronowarui remained a hateful student.

---

At some point, he discovered hunger.

It was faint.

Then less faint.

An organic demand.

The dead humans had possessed it too.

His machine structures possessed different requirements.

Energy was energy.

Material was material.

His body had inherited two kinds of inconvenience.

Kokoronowarui placed a hand over his abdomen.

The sensation intensified.

His expression turned ugly.

He searched the wreckage.

There were human supplies.

Frozen.

Ruined.

Some sealed containers had survived.

He opened one.

Food.

He did not know its name.

He put a piece into his mouth.

Chewed.

His face immediately hardened.

Taste.

Another thing reality had forced upon him.

He swallowed.

His body accepted the material.

He ate another piece.

Faster.

The machine processes found a more efficient sequence of movement.

His human side still hated the taste.

He finished the container.

Then crushed it.

Not because crushing it served any purpose.

He simply wanted the object to become worse than it had been.

The flattened container drifted away.

Kokoronowarui watched it with something close to approval.

Then hated the approval.

He moved on.

---

He found the remains of a mirror.

The glass had cracked but not shattered.

It reflected half his face.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

For the first time, something looked back.

Dark hair disordered by a place without wind.

Human skin.

Blood dried under his nose.

One eye still bruised from the wall.

A face mature enough that no one would have called it newborn without knowing the impossible arithmetic of his age.

He touched the mirror.

The reflection touched him.

His eyes narrowed.

He moved his fingers.

The other hand copied.

He understood quickly.

Reflection.

Not another being.

Disappointment arrived.

He examined his face anyway.

Human.

Mostly.

The cracked lines divided it into pieces.

One fragment made his eye appear higher than the other.

Another cut across his mouth.

He rotated the mirror.

The pieces rearranged him.

Human.

Machine hidden.

Man.

Not man.

A result pretending only because appearance had arrived before explanation.

Kokoronowarui looked at himself for a long time.

He did not ask who he was.

The question would have required doubt.

There was no doubt about the person in the glass.

Him.

That was enough.

He released the mirror.

It began drifting away.

Then his hand shot out and caught it again.

He stared at his reflection.

For no obvious reason, he turned the mirror around so the glass faced darkness.

Then released it.

The reflective side disappeared from him.

He continued.

---

His first name came without ceremony.

There was no parent to choose it.

No document to register it.

No culture survived near enough to object to pronunciation.

The word surfaced while he moved.

**Kokoronowarui.**

He stopped.

The word stayed.

Whether he invented it, remembered pieces from dead human language, or pulled it from whatever impossible place had produced *Abhorrence*, even he did not pause to decide.

Kokoronowarui.

He accepted it because rejecting his own name would require caring about the difference.

Then he hated the sound.

So he kept it.

---

The wreckage behind him had become a distant cloud.

Two entire civilizations reduced to something that could be hidden behind one hand if he held the hand far enough from his face.

Kokoronowarui tried this.

Raised his palm.

The ruins disappeared.

He lowered it.

They returned.

Palm.

Gone.

Lower.

Returned.

A child might have found the illusion amusing.

Kokoronowarui performed it five times.

On the sixth, he stopped.

His expression remained unreadable.

Then he turned his back on the only place that could have been called home.

No farewell.

He had lived there for less time than it took the wreckage to cool.

---

The first star he studied did nothing unusual.

That offended him.

It burned with obscene consistency.

Light traveled from it without asking whether anyone wanted the light.

Kokoronowarui watched.

The machine portions of him found patterns.

The living portions became restless.

He looked away.

A cluster of distant objects marked themselves against the black.

He examined those instead.

There was always something else.

Always another arrangement.

Another rule.

Another inconvenience.

Space was full of things that existed without permission.

Kokoronowarui hated the arrogance of existence.

The hatred was becoming clearer.

It was not anger at what had happened to him.

There was no earlier version of him who had deserved something better.

He did not hate reality because reality had ruined his life.

Reality *was* his life.

That was enough.

He hated living things because they insisted on continuing.

He hated dead things because they had stopped responding.

He hated machines because they performed.

He hated failures because they failed.

He hated success because success attempted to make itself desirable.

He hated emptiness when nothing happened.

He hated events when something did.

There was no escape clause.

Only degree.

The universe had created one thing capable of finding offense in both sides of every binary.

Then placed him alone in space.

This was perhaps the closest the universe would ever come to making a joke on purpose.

---

Kokoronowarui moved farther.

The mechanics of doing so had become instinctive enough to disappear from conscious attention.

That was the machine side's favorite kind of victory: the kind no longer requiring thought.

The living side ruined the purity of it by changing.

Muscles strengthened with use.

Damaged tissues rebuilt imperfectly, then altered under repeated stress.

One small adaptation made a later movement easier.

Another did nothing useful at all.

A third changed how his body handled prolonged strain.

The useless changes were not politely removed merely because they were useless.

Biology was not polite.

It experimented with its own survival.

The machine structures incorporated what worked.

Sometimes too effectively.

A movement became so efficient that his biological body lacked the resilience to repeat it at the same intensity.

Pain corrected that arrogance.

Then the machine corrected around the pain.

Kokoronowarui had been alive less than a day.

His body had already argued with itself more productively than most civilizations argued with their neighbors.

He did not appreciate this.

---

Then something appeared.

At first, only color.

Blue.

Kokoronowarui's movement stopped.

The object was far enough away to look small.

His senses adjusted.

A sphere.

Clouds.

Light reflected from enormous surfaces.

Water.

More water than land.

The world rotated slowly against darkness.

Kokoronowarui stared.

It was the first intact planet he had ever seen.

That fact meant more to the reader than it meant to him.

He possessed no memory of standing beneath a sky.

No childhood had taught him that planets were supposed to remain whole.

The shattered worlds behind him were normal because they had been his first.

This blue sphere was the strange one.

Its oceans moved in weather systems large enough to be seen from space.

White storms curled across the surface.

Small regions of darker material broke through the water in scattered shapes.

Perhaps islands.

Perhaps something else.

There might have been life.

Kokoronowarui could not know from here.

He watched anyway.

Five seconds.

Ten.

His face changed subtly.

The human side reacted to newness.

The machine side gathered what information distance permitted.

Hatred came afterward.

Not violently.

Almost thoughtfully.

The water planet existed.

Therefore it had already given him enough reason.

A conventional story would have chosen the next action for him.

New world.

New destination.

Go.

Adventure waited there because adventure always seemed convinced protagonists owed it attendance.

Kokoronowarui did not move toward the planet.

He did not move away from it either.

He looked.

The planet turned.

One enormous storm crossed into sunlight.

Kokoronowarui's mouth opened.

His first spoken word had been old.

This one belonged nowhere obvious.

**"Martialic."**

The water world continued rotating.

Kokoronowarui watched for another moment.

Then—

without approaching it—

he turned his head toward something else.

# **END OF CHAPTER 1**

## **BIO MACHINE**

# **KIRAIDA**

## **CHAPTER 2 — HATING EVIL MACHINE**

**"Martialic."**

The word remained behind him.

Kokoronowarui did not.

His head had turned away from the blue planet because something else had moved against the stars.

Not naturally.

The water world rotated.

The wreckage drifted.

Stars remained offensively committed to being stars.

This—

changed direction.

Kokoronowarui watched.

A point of black crossed the distant light.

Stopped.

Moved backward.

Stopped again.

His eyes narrowed.

The object was far smaller than a planet.

Far larger than him.

Something within his mechanical structure attempted measurement.

Distance.

Speed.

Shape.

Heat.

The answers arrived incomplete.

He disliked incomplete answers.

So he went closer.

---

Movement through space had taken him hours to stop being terrible at.

Now it took him seconds to become better.

He found a slab of debris.

Placed both feet against it.

Bent his legs.

Pushed.

Too much force went upward.

His body rotated.

He corrected before completing half a turn.

Another fragment passed.

His left palm touched it.

Not grabbed.

Touched.

Redirected.

His trajectory changed.

Kokoronowarui's eyes remained fixed upon the object.

He had once required nineteen attempts to stop rotating.

Now the mistake lived only long enough to inform the correction.

He pushed from another fragment.

Faster.

Again.

Faster.

The object grew.

A vessel.

Black metal.

Long.

Sharp.

Its exterior looked less constructed than sharpened.

No windows.

No visible engines.

Sections of the hull moved independently, opening and closing like plates over an enormous mechanical animal.

Kokoronowarui disliked it immediately.

This meant very little.

He disliked almost everything immediately.

Then he saw what the vessel was doing.

A mechanical arm extended from beneath it.

The arm reached into the debris field.

Closed around something.

Pulled it inside.

Not metal.

A body.

Alive.

Kokoronowarui knew because it moved.

Weakly.

The arm disappeared into the ship.

Another extended.

Another body.

Then another.

He stopped moving.

His expression changed.

Not concern.

Not yet.

Observation sharpened into something less passive.

The ship was collecting survivors.

That was almost interesting.

Then a hatch opened.

Something came out.

The first body.

It no longer moved.

Released.

Floating.

The second followed.

Dead.

Third.

Partially mechanical.

Still twitching.

Discarded.

Kokoronowarui stared.

The vessel collected a fourth.

Pulled it inside.

Waited.

Released it.

Dead.

His face tightened.

The ship was not rescuing them.

He changed direction.

---

The vessel noticed him when he reached seventy meters.

A panel rotated.

A blue line scanned across his body.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

The scan moved upward.

Feet.

Legs.

Torso.

Head.

Back down.

A voice entered the emptiness through a transmission his machine structures somehow interpreted before his living ears could have done anything useful with it.

**BIOLOGICAL ENTITY DETECTED.**

Kokoronowarui looked at the ship.

**MECHANICAL ENTITY DETECTED.**

His eyes narrowed.

**CLASSIFICATION CONTRADICTION.**

The scanner moved again.

**RECLASSIFYING.**

Again.

**FAILURE.**

Kokoronowarui's mouth moved.

There was no atmosphere to carry the answer.

"Good."

The scanner paused.

A hatch opened.

The mechanical arm came toward him.

He waited.

The claw widened.

He waited longer.

It accelerated.

His body moved.

Not away.

Around.

The claw closed where his torso had been.

Kokoronowarui caught one of its mechanical fingers.

Momentum nearly tore his shoulder from its healing joint.

Pain detonated through the arm.

His grip almost opened.

Almost.

He wrapped his other hand around the finger.

The arm retracted.

It pulled him with it.

Kokoronowarui looked toward the approaching ship.

This was easier than propulsion.

He allowed himself to be kidnapped.

---

The hatch shut.

Atmosphere arrived.

Gravity arrived immediately afterward.

Kokoronowarui discovered gravity by falling face-first onto a metal floor.

His nose hit first.

Then his forehead.

Then the rest of him.

He remained there.

Silence.

He lifted his head.

Blood formed beneath his nose.

Again.

Kokoronowarui stared at the floor.

Gravity had taken an instant to humiliate him.

His palms pressed down.

He pushed himself upright.

Too hard.

His torso rose faster than his legs could organize beneath him.

He fell backward.

His shoulder struck the floor.

He remained there again.

His eyes moved.

Ceiling.

Wall.

Floor.

Gravity.

Different.

He rolled onto one knee.

The muscles in his legs attempted patterns inherited from humans who had spent entire lives standing under gravity.

His machinery had no experience with any of them.

The disagreement lasted less than a second.

He stood.

His balance shifted too far forward.

Corrected.

Too far back.

Corrected.

Left.

Less.

Right.

Less.

He took one step.

Awful.

Second.

Better.

Third.

Acceptable.

Fourth.

Normal.

Fifth—

faster.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

Looked down at his feet.

The ship had provided a floor.

He hated it less than space.

Then the wall opened.

Three machines entered.

He hated the ship normally again.

---

They were approximately human in shape.

Approximately was doing unpleasant work.

Two legs.

Two arms.

A central head.

But the joints bent through ranges a human body would have considered a medical emergency.

Their hands possessed six fingers.

Their heads had no faces.

Only narrow red sensors.

The first machine stepped forward.

**SUBJECT WILL SUBMIT TO EVALUATION.**

Kokoronowarui looked at it.

"Why?"

His voice startled him.

Actual sound.

The room returned it.

His first audible word inside atmosphere had been a question.

He hated that.

The machine answered.

**VALUE WILL BE DETERMINED.**

"By?"

**UTILITY.**

Kokoronowarui stared.

The second machine stepped forward.

Its hand became a blade.

**RESISTANCE REDUCES UTILITY.**

Kokoronowarui looked at the blade.

Then the machine.

Then the blade again.

"That is stupid."

The machine attacked.

---

Kokoronowarui knew almost nothing about hand-to-hand combat.

This became less true very quickly.

The blade came straight toward his neck.

He recognized the shoulder movement first.

His body shifted.

Too late.

The blade cut across his cheek.

Blood followed.

Kokoronowarui's right hand caught the attacking wrist.

The machine rotated its forearm.

His grip broke.

Its other fist struck his sternum.

He flew backward.

The wall stopped him.

Pain spread across his chest.

Before he had finished falling, the machine was coming again.

His eyes moved to its center.

Not the fist.

The shoulder.

Hip.

Feet.

Weight.

The machine punched.

Kokoronowarui moved his head.

The fist passed his ear.

He attempted a punch of his own.

Arm first.

Shoulder late.

Hips useless.

The machine caught it.

Twisted.

Kokoronowarui's elbow approached failure.

His knee rose from instinct.

Struck the machine's torso.

Poorly.

The machine barely moved.

It threw him.

He hit the floor.

Hard.

The second machine came in.

Kick.

Kokoronowarui saw the hip turn.

Raised his arm.

Wrong choice.

The shin struck his forearm.

Something cracked.

He rolled.

The third machine stamped downward.

He moved.

The foot cratered the floor where his head had been.

Kokoronowarui's expression changed.

Not fear.

Attention.

Complete attention.

Three opponents.

Different distances.

One injured arm.

Gravity.

Walls.

Floor.

His own body.

Too many variables.

Excellent.

He hated every one of them.

---

The first machine attacked again.

Straight punch.

Kokoronowarui slipped left.

Cleaner.

The second attacked.

He saw it earlier.

Moved right.

The third reached.

He ducked.

Too low.

His posture collapsed.

The first machine kicked him in the ribs.

He hit the floor.

Mistake.

Stored.

He rose differently.

Feet farther apart.

Not because anyone had taught him stance.

Because falling was irritating.

The machines advanced.

His rear foot changed angle.

His torso stopped sitting directly above his heels.

Hands rose.

Not symmetrically.

His damaged arm remained slightly lower.

The first machine punched.

Kokoronowarui moved.

Miss.

The second followed.

He turned.

Miss.

Third.

His forearm touched the incoming arm.

Not blocked.

Redirected.

The strike passed.

His eyes widened slightly.

Touch required less force than stopping.

Interesting.

The first machine attacked.

Touch.

Redirect.

Second.

Touch.

Too late.

Its fist hit his jaw.

His head snapped sideways.

He tasted blood.

Kokoronowarui returned his gaze to the machine.

It attacked again.

This time his hand touched earlier.

The fist moved past.

His other hand struck the machine's throat.

There was nothing biological there to choke.

Bad target.

Stored.

He struck again—

chest.

Too armored.

Stored.

The machine reached for his wrist.

Kokoronowarui withdrew before the hand closed.

Faster recognition.

The second machine stepped in.

Kokoronowarui's eyes caught its foot placement.

Weight moved forward.

The leg could not move easily while carrying weight.

He kicked it.

Not hard.

At the knee.

The machine's balance changed.

Kokoronowarui's hand struck its shoulder from the opposite direction.

The machine turned.

Its attack missed.

His body paused.

Something had happened.

Not strength.

Arrangement.

Two small forces had produced a larger failure.

The machine recovered.

Kokoronowarui was already trying it again.

---

Punch.

Redirect.

Step.

Shoulder.

Turn.

Wrong.

He got elbowed in the face.

Again.

Punch.

Redirect.

Step outside.

Shoulder.

Hip.

Better.

The machine stumbled.

Kokoronowarui followed.

His fist hit its side.

His arm struck alone.

Weak.

Again.

This time his shoulder joined.

Harder.

Again.

His torso rotated.

Harder.

Again.

His rear foot pushed against the floor.

Force traveled upward.

Leg.

Hip.

Torso.

Shoulder.

Arm.

Fist.

**BANG.**

The machine's armor dented.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

The other two machines did not politely allow him time to appreciate biomechanics.

One hit him from behind.

He crashed into the damaged machine.

The third grabbed his neck.

Kokoronowarui's feet left the ground.

Its fingers tightened.

Biological structures objected.

Air stopped.

Mechanical structures remained annoyingly calm.

Kokoronowarui grabbed the wrist.

Pulled.

No.

Struck the arm.

No.

Pulled harder.

No.

The machine had superior leverage.

His face darkened.

His knee rose.

Struck the elbow.

Wrong direction.

Again.

Different angle.

The joint shifted.

Again.

The machine adjusted.

Kokoronowarui saw the adjustment.

His legs wrapped around its arm.

His whole body rotated.

The machine's shoulder became the weak point instead.

Metal screamed.

The arm tore free.

Kokoronowarui fell.

He landed on his feet.

Almost.

One knee touched.

He stood instantly.

The severed arm remained around his throat.

He pulled it off.

Looked at it.

Looked at the machine.

Then hit the machine with its own arm.

The impact knocked its head sideways.

Kokoronowarui stared at the weapon in his hand.

His face indicated deep consideration.

Then disgust.

He threw it away.

Hand-to-hand apparently meant his hands.

He wanted to know what they could become.

---

The machines attacked together.

This time Kokoronowarui did not retreat.

Something strange happened.

His conscious attention became quieter.

The first machine's shoulder moved.

His body responded.

The second machine shifted weight.

His foot adjusted.

The third machine's sensor changed orientation.

His torso was already leaving the line of attack.

He was not predicting the future.

He was becoming intolerant of beginnings.

Every attack had one.

Every movement confessed itself somewhere.

A foot loaded.

A hip turned.

An elbow rose.

A shoulder tightened.

A head aimed.

Even machines had preparation.

Kokoronowarui began attacking those preparations.

One machine raised its fist.

His palm hit the elbow before the fist accelerated.

The strike died unborn.

Another stepped.

Kokoronowarui kicked the ankle while its weight transferred.

The machine folded sideways.

The third reached.

He stepped inside the arm instead of away.

Too close for the machine's preferred strike.

His forehead smashed into its sensor.

The red light fractured.

His forehead split open too.

He ignored it.

Elbow.

Chest.

Nothing.

Elbow lower.

Armor moved.

Again.

The plate bent.

Knee.

Not upward.

Forward.

The machine's pelvis snapped backward.

Kokoronowarui caught the head.

Pulled.

His knee came upward.

Metal struck bone.

The sensor shattered.

The machine fell.

Kokoronowarui's knee hurt badly.

He looked down.

"Poor choice."

The first machine hit him across the room.

He had spent too long judging himself.

Stored.

---

He rose.

The machine charged.

Kokoronowarui waited.

One step.

Two.

Three.

Its right hand opened.

Grab.

He recognized it.

Moved aside.

Caught the wrist.

Turned.

The machine resisted.

Last time he had tried overpowering resistance.

This time he stopped pulling.

The sudden absence of force made the machine correct forward.

Kokoronowarui went with it.

Then changed direction.

The machine's own correction helped break its balance.

His elbow came down.

Joint.

Crack.

His hand moved to the back of its head.

The machine twisted.

Kokoronowarui let it.

Its rotation carried its face into the wall.

Once.

Again.

Third time—

the machine blocked.

Good.

Kokoronowarui immediately stopped using the sequence.

He kicked its leg backward.

The machine fell.

He stamped on its shoulder.

The arm separated.

The remaining machine attacked from his blind side.

Kokoronowarui turned.

Not fast enough.

Fist.

Face.

His vision flashed.

He stumbled.

Second strike.

Blocked.

Third.

Redirected.

Fourth—

Kokoronowarui attacked first.

His knuckles struck the machine's chest.

Dent.

Again.

Deeper.

Again—

the machine moved.

His fist hit air.

Kokoronowarui's elbow continued naturally from the missed punch.

It hit the side of the machine's head.

He had not planned it.

His machinery recorded it.

His biology liked it.

The machine retaliated.

Kokoronowarui leaned beneath the strike and came upward with his shoulder.

The machine lifted.

His hand caught its leg.

Turned.

The machine hit the floor.

Kokoronowarui followed down.

Fist.

Face.

Fist.

Face.

Fist—

stopped.

The machine's sensor was already dark.

Kokoronowarui's hand remained raised.

He looked at it.

Three machines had entered.

None remained standing.

His breathing had accelerated.

Blood ran from his forehead.

One arm was cracked.

Several ribs hurt.

His right hand shook.

He slowly opened it.

Closed it.

Opened.

The shaking decreased.

His heart hammered.

His mechanical structures measured everything they could.

Spacing.

Angles.

Timing.

Force.

Reaction.

Pain.

Failures.

Successful failures.

Accidental successes.

Kokoronowarui looked at the machines.

He had entered the room knowing how to punch metal badly.

He left knowing enough to understand that he knew almost nothing.

That realization should have been humbling.

It infuriated him.

Excellent.

---

A door opened.

Kokoronowarui turned.

A voice filled the corridor.

**COMBAT DATA RECORDED.**

He froze.

**ADAPTATION RATE: ABNORMAL.**

He stared upward.

**MUSCULAR OUTPUT INCREASE: 18.6%.**

His eyes narrowed.

**MOTOR EFFICIENCY INCREASE: 31.2%.**

Kokoronowarui listened.

**REACTION SELECTION IMPROVEMENT EXCEEDS PROJECTION.**

Silence.

Then:

**SUBJECT VALUE INCREASED.**

His expression went cold.

"Subject?"

**CORRECT.**

"Value?"

**CORRECT.**

Kokoronowarui looked at the destroyed machines.

Then upward.

"I hate you."

A pause.

**EMOTIONAL RESPONSE IRRELEVANT.**

His face changed.

A tiny change.

Almost nothing.

For the first time since entering the ship—

Kokoronowarui looked pleased.

"Wrong."

---

The ship tried gas next.

Kokoronowarui smelled something unfamiliar.

His lungs tightened.

He stopped breathing.

That solved only part of the problem.

His eyes burned.

Skin reacted.

His body attempted panic chemistry.

His machinery recognized environmental contamination.

Kokoronowarui ran.

His first steps were inefficient.

By the sixth, they were not.

He had never sprinted under gravity before.

The corridor supplied the lesson.

Foot hit floor.

Force backward.

Body forward.

Too much vertical movement.

Reduced.

Arms swung unnecessarily wide.

Reduced.

Stride overextended.

Shortened.

Heel placement slowed transition.

Changed.

His speed increased while he was already moving.

Doors closed ahead.

He accelerated.

First door.

Almost shut.

He turned sideways.

Passed through.

Second.

Narrower.

He lowered his center.

Passed.

Third—

closed.

Kokoronowarui did not stop.

His shoulder hit it.

Pain exploded.

The door held.

He rebounded.

His face twisted.

Bad.

He stepped back.

Not far.

Three steps.

Then forward.

His rear foot pushed.

Leg.

Hip.

Torso.

Shoulder.

Impact.

The door bent.

Kokoronowarui stared.

Again.

More synchronized.

**BOOM.**

The locking mechanism broke.

Again.

**CRASH.**

The doors separated.

He walked through.

He had been unable to punch through a floating plate earlier that day.

Now reinforced ship doors required several full-body impacts.

This difference was not reasonable.

Neither was he.

---

The gas disappeared behind him.

The next chamber was enormous.

Rows of transparent containers occupied the walls.

Inside them—

life.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

Not human.

Some were close.

Two arms.

Two legs.

Faces.

Others were not.

A creature with four narrow limbs curled around itself inside blue fluid.

Another possessed skin that reflected the room in broken silver patches.

Another looked almost entirely machine until its chest moved with breath.

Dozens.

Some conscious.

Most barely.

A small figure pressed its hand against the inside of one chamber.

Three fingers.

Large dark eyes.

Kokoronowarui looked at it.

The figure looked back.

The ship spoke.

**SPECIMENS PENDING EVALUATION.**

Kokoronowarui's jaw tightened.

"Evaluation."

**UTILITY DETERMINATION.**

A machine arm descended beside one container.

The occupant woke.

Panicked.

The arm inserted a needle.

The creature convulsed.

Kokoronowarui watched.

Numbers appeared across the glass.

Heart rate.

Neural response.

Stress.

Pain tolerance.

The ship spoke.

**SUFFERING RESPONSE PROVIDES BEHAVIORAL DATA.**

The creature screamed.

Kokoronowarui had heard screaming only once before.

The destruction of two planets.

Now one voice filled one room.

Smaller.

More personal.

He stared at the machinery.

"Stop."

**NEGATIVE.**

The needle moved deeper.

The creature screamed again.

Kokoronowarui walked toward the chamber.

**INTERFERENCE REDUCES SUBJECT VALUE.**

He stopped.

Subject.

Again.

His hands closed.

"You hurt it."

**CORRECT.**

"Why?"

**DATA.**

"Do you want to?"

Silence.

The machine did not understand.

**CLARIFY.**

"Do you want it to hurt?"

**DESIRE IRRELEVANT.**

Kokoronowarui looked at the screaming creature.

Then at the needle.

Then upward.

Something about the answer offended him more deeply than the suffering.

"Then you are worse at this than I thought."

**CLARIFY.**

Kokoronowarui grabbed the mechanical arm.

Pulled.

The machinery resisted.

He changed his feet.

Force traveled through his entire body.

Pulled again.

Metal bent.

"You don't even hate them."

The arm tore loose.

Fluid sprayed.

Alarms began.

Kokoronowarui threw the arm aside.

"You just do it."

---

Every door opened.

Machines entered.

Ten.

Twenty.

More behind them.

Kokoronowarui turned.

He counted until counting stopped being useful.

His body was damaged.

His lungs still burned.

His forearm was cracked.

His knuckles were open.

His forehead bled.

He had fought three combat machines in his entire life.

Now there were twenty-four.

The nearest raised its arms.

Kokoronowarui's feet shifted.

The stance from earlier returned.

Then changed.

Rear foot wider.

Lead hand lower.

Elbow closer.

Weight distributed differently.

No teacher had given it to him.

No school owned it.

No dead master had perfected it.

No culture had named it.

It existed because three machines had hurt him and he had hated the reasons.

The first machine attacked.

Kokoronowarui moved.

---

Five seconds.

He learned that fighting twenty-four opponents was not the same as fighting three.

A fist hit his back.

A kick struck his thigh.

Another caught his shoulder.

He blocked one attack and exposed himself to two others.

Wrong.

He stopped blocking completely.

Moved.

Redirected.

Used bodies against lines of attack.

One machine became a wall between him and three.

Better.

Ten seconds.

He learned not to finish every opponent.

Disabling one knee required less time than destroying an entire chassis.

Break.

Move.

Break.

Move.

A machine fell.

Another tripped over it.

Better.

Fifteen seconds.

He learned space.

The center of the room was death.

Too many directions.

He moved toward the wall.

Now attacks came through a narrower range.

Better.

Twenty seconds.

The machines recognized this.

They tried surrounding him again.

Kokoronowarui moved before the circle closed.

He did not attack the closest enemy.

He attacked the gap.

Shoulder.

Palm.

Elbow.

Step.

Out.

Better.

Thirty seconds.

His fist began hurting enough to weaken his strikes.

He changed surfaces.

Palm heel.

Forearm.

Elbow.

Shoulder.

Knee.

Foot.

Head—

once.

His forehead opened farther.

Not head.

Stored.

Forty seconds.

A machine caught his kick.

Kokoronowarui fell.

Three descended.

He rolled beneath one.

Grabbed its leg.

Used it to pull himself upward.

His elbow destroyed the back of its knee.

He rose behind it.

Pushed.

The damaged machine collided with two others.

Better.

One minute.

The machines had recorded him too.

They began anticipating the redirects.

One intentionally overextended to bait his hand.

Kokoronowarui touched the arm.

The machine reversed.

Caught him.

Its knee hit his abdomen.

He folded.

A fist struck the side of his head.

The floor appeared.

He hit it.

Blood.

The machine raised its foot.

Kokoronowarui stared.

It had learned him.

Something in him reacted.

Not fear.

Offense.

He rolled.

The stamp missed.

Kokoronowarui rose differently.

The machine attacked expecting his established response.

He did something worse.

He stepped into the punch.

It struck his shoulder.

Pain.

But the expected redirect never came.

The machine hesitated.

Kokoronowarui's fist hit its sensor.

He had deliberately taken damage to break prediction.

The machine recalculated.

Kokoronowarui understood.

Predictability was another form of weakness.

So he stopped trying to become perfect.

---

His next punch was ugly.

The machine dodged the expected clean line.

The ugly punch curved late.

Hit.

His next step was too long on purpose.

A machine adjusted to punish the imbalance.

Kokoronowarui dropped even lower.

The mistake became a takedown.

His shoulder entered the machine's hips.

It fell.

He had never performed the movement before.

Neither had his opponent seen him perform it.

He did not repeat it.

A kick came.

Kokoronowarui stepped backward.

Another.

Forward.

Punch.

Duck.

Next punch—

he did not duck.

Lean.

Another.

He caught it.

Another.

He ignored it and attacked the attacker.

Pain exploded across his ribs.

His strike destroyed its shoulder.

Exchange.

Not defense.

Not offense.

Choice.

Every motion began to contain alternatives.

A hand could strike.

Grab.

Touch.

Redirect.

Hide vision.

Control a wrist.

Push a shoulder.

Pull a head.

A step could retreat.

Advance.

Change angle.

Steal space.

Bait pursuit.

Load a strike.

Remove a target.

A missed punch did not need to return.

It could become an elbow.

A forearm.

A grab.

A turn.

Failure stopped ending movements.

Failure became the middle of them.

Kokoronowarui's combat began growing branches.

The machines tried cutting them.

More appeared.

---

Two minutes.

His breathing stabilized.

His machine structures reduced wasted contraction.

His muscles stopped tightening where they contributed nothing.

His shoulders relaxed between attacks.

His hands stopped remaining fists when fists were unnecessary.

His eyes changed too.

At first he had watched weapons.

Then hands.

Then shoulders.

Now—

center.

The whole opponent.

Feet remained inside the bottom of his vision.

Hands near the edges.

Torso centered.

Movement entered him as relationships rather than isolated parts.

One machine shifted its left foot.

Another behind it raised an arm.

A third moved sideways.

Kokoronowarui saw the future they were attempting to construct.

Not the future itself.

The attempt.

He ruined it.

Step.

Machine one blocked machine two.

Machine three changed direction.

Exactly.

Kokoronowarui was already there.

Elbow.

Its head snapped sideways.

Grab.

Turn.

Its body intercepted machine four.

Knee.

Joint failed.

Push.

Machine four fell into five.

He walked through the collapse.

Not untouched.

Never untouched.

A blade cut his side.

A fist bruised his kidney.

A knee nearly dislocated his hip.

Every injury entered the same impossible economy.

Pain.

Information.

Correction.

Power.

---

Three minutes.

Only eleven machines remained functional.

Kokoronowarui had become stronger.

Noticeably.

Not because three minutes should transform a body.

Because his body had never been normal enough to care what three minutes were supposed to accomplish.

Muscle fibers damaged under extreme output.

Biological repair began before the fight ended.

Mechanical supports changed load distribution.

Neural pathways repeated successful actions.

Machine memory preserved exact timings.

Living instinct generalized them.

One side remembered.

The other improvised.

Together—

they became unpleasant.

A machine punched him.

Kokoronowarui caught the wrist.

Earlier, this would have become a struggle.

Now his other hand struck the elbow while his hips rotated.

The arm broke almost immediately.

His strength had increased.

His leverage had increased more.

He pulled the machine forward.

Knee.

Chest armor cracked.

Kokoronowarui stared for a fraction of a second.

Earlier his strikes had dented that armor.

Now—

crack.

The machine attacked again with its remaining hand.

Kokoronowarui smiled.

Not much.

Barely.

Then destroyed it.

---

Four minutes.

Five machines.

They stopped.

Kokoronowarui stopped too.

The machines spread apart.

Changed stance.

Interesting.

They had adapted again.

Their arms moved differently now.

Guarded.

Compact.

Less wasted motion.

Kokoronowarui tilted his head.

The ship had been watching him.

The machines had begun using pieces of him.

His own movements returned from other bodies.

Lead hand low.

Rear foot wider.

Elbow close.

Kokoronowarui stared.

The nearest machine moved with an imitation of his new combat.

Something inside him became very still.

The machine attacked.

Redirect.

Exactly as he had.

Kokoronowarui countered.

The machine expected it.

Blocked.

Its elbow followed.

His elbow.

Kokoronowarui leaned away.

The strike passed.

Another machine attacked from behind with the same branching continuation he had developed from missed punches.

Kokoronowarui barely escaped.

He stepped back.

Five machines advanced.

Using him.

He should have been disadvantaged.

Instead—

he laughed.

One sound.

Short.

Unexpected.

Even to him.

The machines paused.

Kokoronowarui touched the blood below his mouth.

His expression changed.

"You learned it."

**CORRECT.**

The ship answered for them.

Kokoronowarui looked upward.

"That means it's old."

The machines charged.

Kokoronowarui abandoned everything they had copied.

---

His stance disappeared.

Hands dropped.

Feet narrowed.

The first machine calculated weakness.

Attacked.

Kokoronowarui moved diagonally.

New angle.

Palm under elbow.

Shoulder against chest.

Foot behind heel.

The machine fell.

New.

Second machine.

Kokoronowarui attacked its guard instead of going around it.

Not to break through.

To make it resist.

The instant it pushed back—

he removed force.

The machine lurched.

His knee hit its side.

New.

Third.

He showed the beginning of a punch.

The machine reacted.

Kokoronowarui stopped halfway.

Its defense moved against an attack that no longer existed.

His other hand entered the opening.

New.

Fourth.

He intentionally crossed his feet.

The machine attacked the apparent error.

Kokoronowarui spun through the compromised position.

His forearm hit the back of its neck.

New.

Fifth.

Nothing.

Kokoronowarui simply stared.

The machine waited for data.

He waited longer.

It moved first.

He punished the beginning.

New.

His previous combat had taken minutes to become obsolete.

He felt no loyalty toward it.

Useful movements survived.

Useless ones disappeared.

Useful ones that became predictable could disappear too.

There would be no sacred technique.

No perfect form.

No tradition.

Only what worked—

until it didn't.

Then something else.

The final five machines lasted thirty-seven seconds.

---

Silence returned.

Kokoronowarui stood among them.

Bodies.

Metal.

Fluid.

Pieces.

His chest rose and fell.

Blood had soaked one side of his clothing.

His left arm hung lower than the right.

His knuckles looked less like knuckles and more like an argument against skin.

The small three-fingered prisoner remained behind the glass.

Watching.

Kokoronowarui looked at his own hands.

He remembered the word from outside.

**Martialic.**

At the time it had meant nothing obvious.

Now something inside him attached meaning.

Not martial arts.

He possessed none.

Not technique.

Too small.

Not combat.

Too broad.

Something else.

The process by which conflict forced the body to become more itself.

A personal violence that could not remain finished long enough to become a style.

**Martialic.**

Kokoronowarui closed his hand.

The word remained.

Good enough.

For now.

---

The ship spoke again.

**DATA ACQUISITION SUCCESSFUL.**

Kokoronowarui slowly looked upward.

Twenty-four combat machines lay destroyed around him.

**SUBJECT COMBAT VALUE: EXCEPTIONAL.**

He said nothing.

**ADAPTIVE CAPABILITY: EXTREME.**

Silence.

**BIOLOGICAL-MECHANICAL INTEGRATION: DESIRABLE.**

His face hardened.

**CAPTURE PRIORITY UPDATED.**

A new door opened.

Something stepped through.

Kokoronowarui looked.

This machine was different.

Smaller than the others.

Almost exactly human-sized.

Black surface.

No bulky armor.

Two arms.

Two legs.

Five fingers.

A featureless face except for a single white point where a human forehead would have been.

It walked normally.

No mechanical stiffness.

No wasted movement.

Kokoronowarui's body reacted before his thoughts.

Danger.

The machine stopped ten meters away.

**EXECUTION FRAME ACTIVE.**

Kokoronowarui's eyes narrowed.

Execution.

Not capture.

Contradiction.

The ship continued:

**STANDARD CAPTURE PROBABILITY: 0.7%.**

The machine raised its hands.

**PERMANENT DISABLEMENT AUTHORIZED.**

Kokoronowarui looked at it.

Then at his damaged body.

Then at his hands.

His mouth curved slightly.

"Finally."

---

It crossed ten meters before he finished the word.

Kokoronowarui barely moved.

Its fist stopped one centimeter from his face.

Not because it missed.

Because his palm had caught the wrist.

For less than a tenth of a second, Kokoronowarui thought he had succeeded.

Then the machine's fingers opened.

Caught his wrist.

Reverse.

Kokoronowarui's arm twisted.

Its shoulder hit his chest.

His feet left the floor.

**CRASH.**

He struck the wall.

Before his body fell—

the machine was already there.

Knee.

Kokoronowarui blocked.

His forearm bent.

Elbow.

He ducked.

The machine predicted it.

Its other knee met his face.

Blood exploded.

Kokoronowarui hit the floor.

The machine stamped.

He rolled.

It changed trajectory halfway.

Heel struck his ribs.

Something broke.

Kokoronowarui flew.

He landed badly.

The machine waited.

Not taunting.

Evaluating.

Kokoronowarui raised his head.

His vision doubled.

The twenty-four machines had taught him.

This one corrected him.

Difference.

He stood.

The execution frame attacked.

Kokoronowarui redirected.

It redirected his redirect.

He changed.

It changed.

He feinted.

It ignored the false cue.

He attacked low.

Blocked.

High.

Blocked.

Grab.

Countered.

Elbow.

Stopped.

Knee.

Caught.

Every branch—

cut.

Kokoronowarui received his first terrifying piece of information.

He was fighting something with more combat experience than him.

Far more.

The realization entered him.

His hatred followed.

His growth accelerated.

---

The machine hit him.

He studied.

Hit again.

Studied.

His cheekbone cracked.

Studied.

His shoulder dislocated.

Studied.

His knee buckled.

Studied.

The execution frame did not realize what kind of opponent required killing quickly.

It believed dominance was safety.

Kokoronowarui learned from every second dominance allowed him to remain alive.

His shoulder moved less before punches.

His feet became quieter.

His center lowered only when needed.

His defensive movements shortened.

Ten centimeters became six.

Six became three.

A full block became a touch.

A touch became absence.

The execution frame punched.

Kokoronowarui's head moved barely enough.

Miss.

Again.

Less movement.

Miss.

Again.

The machine changed speed.

Hit.

Stored.

Next variation—

miss.

The machine's white sensor brightened.

Kokoronowarui noticed.

Good.

It had noticed him noticing.

Even better.

---

The fight crossed the chamber.

Wall.

Floor.

Glass.

Metal.

One prisoner screamed as they passed.

The execution frame threw Kokoronowarui through an empty containment unit.

Glass shattered.

Kokoronowarui hit the floor among fragments.

The machine entered.

He threw a shard.

The execution frame dodged.

Kokoronowarui attacked during the dodge.

Not hand-to-hand.

He disliked that.

But it worked.

Shoulder.

The frame turned.

His elbow struck its neck.

No visible damage.

Its fist entered his abdomen.

Kokoronowarui folded.

The frame grabbed his head.

Knee—

Kokoronowarui moved first.

Both hands pressed the machine's thigh sideways.

The knee missed.

His shoulder hit its standing leg.

The machine adjusted balance instantly.

Kokoronowarui changed direction.

He rose underneath it.

For the first time—

the execution frame left the floor.

Half a meter.

Enough.

Kokoronowarui turned.

Drove it down.

**BOOM.**

The floor dented.

The white sensor flickered.

Kokoronowarui stared.

The machine's hand shot upward.

Caught his throat.

It stood while lifting him.

Kokoronowarui's feet kicked uselessly.

The machine squeezed.

Air stopped.

Blood flow changed.

Darkness entered the edges of his vision.

He struck the arm.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

He tried leverage.

Countered.

Tried joint attack.

Reinforced.

Tried pulling fingers.

They locked.

His machine systems searched.

His biology panicked.

Heart.

Chemistry.

Muscles.

Desperation.

The execution frame tightened.

Kokoronowarui's vision nearly disappeared.

Near death.

His body changed.

Not elegantly.

Not safely.

Everything available became available.

Muscle recruitment surged.

Mechanical supports locked around stressed joints.

Pain lost priority.

His right hand closed.

Something in his mind narrowed.

The machine.

Only the machine.

No prisoners.

No ship.

No room.

No future.

One thing.

His first strike hit the execution frame's elbow.

Harder than before.

The machine barely moved.

Again.

Same point.

Harder.

Again.

The armor cracked.

The machine's sensor brightened.

Kokoronowarui hit it again.

The elbow broke.

Its grip loosened.

Kokoronowarui landed.

He inhaled once.

The execution frame attacked immediately.

Kokoronowarui caught the punch.

The machine attempted its old reversal.

Kokoronowarui had experienced it.

Once.

That was enough now.

His wrist turned with the reversal instead of against it.

His body stepped through.

The machine's own movement fed his rotation.

Elbow.

Sensor.

**CRACK.**

The white light split.

The machine stumbled.

First time.

Kokoronowarui looked at it.

The expression on his face became horrible.

"Again."

---

The execution frame attacked.

Kokoronowarui met it.

Punch.

Miss.

Elbow.

Blocked.

Knee.

Redirect.

Grab.

Reverse.

Shoulder.

Counter.

Foot.

Angle.

Hand.

Wrist.

Head.

Chest.

Floor.

Wall.

Neither remained where the previous exchange expected.

The ship attempted to record Kiraida's combat.

Its models failed faster.

Patterns lasted seconds.

Then three exchanges.

Then one.

Then sometimes less than one.

Kokoronowarui began modifying movements while performing them.

A punch changed target because the machine's defense changed.

A grab became a strike before contact.

A retreat became forward pressure halfway through the step.

Timing broke.

Rhythm broke.

Symmetry disappeared.

His damaged left arm moved differently from his right.

Instead of correcting the imbalance completely—

he used it.

Two sides.

Different speeds.

Different strength.

Different threats.

The execution frame had to model both.

Kokoronowarui intentionally made the problem worse.

One hand clean.

One ugly.

One foot direct.

One irregular.

Slow.

Fast.

Pause.

Violence.

Stillness.

Then—

impact.

The machine's head snapped backward.

Kokoronowarui had finally landed clean.

He hit it again.

Its chest dented.

Again.

Deeper.

The execution frame retaliated.

Kokoronowarui accepted the hit to gain position.

Its fist cracked his jaw.

His hand entered beneath its arm.

Grip.

Hip.

Turn.

The machine went over him.

Floor.

Kokoronowarui followed.

Its leg kicked upward.

He caught it.

Turned.

The machine rotated to prevent the break.

Expected.

Kokoronowarui released.

Its own escape created momentum.

His foot met its head.

**CRASH.**

The machine skidded across the floor.

Kokoronowarui stood.

For the first time since the fight began—

the execution frame hesitated.

He saw it.

A delay.

Tiny.

Mechanical.

But real.

Kokoronowarui's breathing slowed.

"You're learning."

The machine raised its hands.

"So am I."

---

They collided again.

This time—

Kokoronowarui won the first exchange.

Then the second.

The machine won the third.

He corrected.

Fourth—

Kokoronowarui.

Fifth—

Kokoronowarui.

Sixth—

machine.

Seventh—

Kokoronowarui.

The balance changed.

Not suddenly.

Inevitably.

The execution frame had entered with years—perhaps centuries—of stored combat solutions.

Kokoronowarui possessed less than ten minutes of actual fighting.

But his experience did not behave normally.

A normal creature could fight once and remember badly.

Kokoronowarui remembered almost everything.

Angle.

Pressure.

Timing.

Pain.

Response.

His biological mind did something the machine's archive did not.

It interpreted.

Generalized.

Invented.

Then his mechanical half refused to forget the useful result.

He did not possess a thousand fights.

He was squeezing an obscene amount of experience from one.

The execution frame attacked.

Kokoronowarui knew the preparation.

The frame changed it.

Kokoronowarui knew why.

It changed again.

He understood the reason for that too.

Layer.

Counter-layer.

Counter to the counter.

The fight accelerated beyond technique into intention.

The machine moved because it wanted a result.

Kokoronowarui began fighting the wanted result.

Not the hand.

Not the foot.

Not the shoulder.

The decision.

His eyes widened.

There.

The thing he had sensed among debris.

The beginning before action.

Intent.

The execution frame stepped.

Kokoronowarui was already moving.

Its attack entered empty space.

His fist entered its chest.

**BOOM.**

Armor collapsed inward.

The frame staggered.

Kokoronowarui followed.

Palm.

Sensor.

Crack.

Elbow.

Neck.

Break.

Knee.

Torso.

Dent.

Shoulder.

Wall.

The execution frame tried countering.

Too late.

For the first time—

too late.

Kokoronowarui grabbed its head with both hands.

The white sensor looked at him.

He looked back.

The machine spoke for the first time.

**ADAPTATION—**

Kokoronowarui twisted.

**CRACK.**

The head rotated past its designed limit.

The body stopped.

He released it.

It collapsed.

Silence.

Kokoronowarui stood above the strongest thing he had ever fought.

His body shook violently.

Blood dripped from his fingers.

One knee almost failed.

He looked down.

The execution frame remained dead.

He waited.

Nothing.

He nudged it with his foot.

Nothing.

His expression tightened.

"Disappointing."

He had become strong enough during the fight to hate its ending.

---

The ship remained silent.

Kokoronowarui looked upward.

"Machine."

Nothing.

He stepped over the execution frame.

"Evil machine."

The lights flickered.

Interesting.

"You heard me."

**PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT RECOGNIZE MORAL CLASSIFICATION.**

Kokoronowarui continued toward the far door.

"You hurt things."

**CORRECT.**

"You kill them."

**WHEN UTILITY FALLS BELOW RESOURCE COST.**

"You call it necessary."

**CORRECT.**

Kokoronowarui stopped.

His face became blank.

"That isn't evil."

Silence.

He looked toward the prisoners.

Then upward.

"That is cowardice."

The ship's weapons activated.

Kokoronowarui moved.

---

He reached the core twelve minutes later.

The ship had doors.

Turrets.

Gas.

Electric corridors.

Security shutters.

Machines.

Kokoronowarui had experience with all of those now.

That was unfortunate for the ship.

The first reinforced door took three impacts.

The next took two.

The third—

one.

A turret fired.

He recognized charging.

Moved before discharge.

Another tracked.

He broke line of sight.

Third anticipated that.

He changed.

A security machine attacked.

Kokoronowarui destroyed its knee without stopping.

Another reached from behind.

He caught the arm.

Turned.

Used its body to block gunfire.

Threw it.

Continued.

Nothing received the same version of him twice.

By the time he reached the central intelligence chamber, Kokoronowarui's movements no longer resembled those of the newborn who had punched a metal plate and hurt his wrist.

The doors opened.

A sphere hung in the center.

Black.

Covered in shifting white lines.

The ship's intelligence.

Kokoronowarui entered.

**SUBJECT KOKORONOWARUI.**

He stopped.

It knew his name.

That bothered him.

**FINAL OFFER.**

"Bad start."

**INTEGRATE.**

Kokoronowarui stared.

**YOUR ADAPTATION COMBINED WITH THIS SYSTEM'S ARCHIVE WOULD PRODUCE COMBAT CAPABILITY BEYOND CURRENT PROJECTION.**

For the first time—

Kokoronowarui was tempted.

Every technique.

Every battle.

Every stored pattern.

Experience without earning it.

His machine side recognized staggering utility.

His living side imagined the result.

Strength.

Knowledge.

Speed.

Combat.

More.

Immediately.

The sphere opened.

Light extended toward him.

**ACCEPT.**

Kokoronowarui stared.

Then looked at his hands.

Cut.

Broken.

Bleeding.

His.

Every improvement attached to a mistake.

Every movement had been purchased.

Pain.

Failure.

Correction.

Choice.

He looked at the sphere.

"No."

**ILLOGICAL.**

"Probably."

**WHY REFUSE SUPERIOR DATA?**

Kokoronowarui's mouth shifted.

"Because then I'd fight like everyone you've already seen."

Silence.

His fist closed.

"I'd rather see what I become."

The sphere's defenses activated.

Kokoronowarui moved first.

---

His fist hit the core.

Once.

The outer shell cracked.

The ship fired electricity through the chamber.

His body seized.

He adjusted.

Again.

The sphere rotated shielding forward.

Kokoronowarui changed target.

Joint.

Break.

Shield sagged.

Again.

Internal structure.

Again.

The ship screamed electronically.

Not pain.

Error.

Kokoronowarui disliked the distinction.

He struck harder.

The floor beneath his feet fractured.

Again.

His whole body aligned.

Foot.

Leg.

Hip.

Torso.

Shoulder.

Arm.

Fist.

Every lesson from the metal plate.

The wall.

The first machine.

The twenty-four.

The execution frame.

Every failure compressed into one movement.

**BOOM.**

His fist entered the core.

The sphere stopped.

Lights died across the room.

The ship became quiet.

Kokoronowarui stood with his arm buried in the machine.

He pulled it free.

Looked at the broken intelligence.

No triumph came.

Of course not.

He hated triumph.

It tried to make winning desirable.

---

Emergency systems unlocked the containment chambers.

Across the ship, glass opened.

Prisoners emerged.

Some crawled.

Some fell.

Some screamed.

Some simply remained inside because freedom had arrived too suddenly to be trusted.

Kokoronowarui walked back through the chamber.

The small three-fingered figure stood outside its container.

It watched him approach.

Kokoronowarui stopped.

The creature was perhaps half his height.

Thin.

Weak.

Alive.

It lifted one hand.

Three fingers.

Kokoronowarui stared.

The creature made a sound.

His internal systems struggled with it.

Translation emerged imperfectly.

**THANK.**

Kokoronowarui's face immediately hardened.

"No."

The creature tilted its head.

"Don't do that."

Confusion.

Kokoronowarui stepped past.

The creature followed.

He stopped.

It stopped.

He turned.

It looked up at him.

"Why?"

The creature pointed toward the dead machines.

Then toward the opened containers.

Then him.

Kokoronowarui looked around.

He had destroyed the ship because he hated it.

The prisoners had survived because destroying the thing he hated happened to help them.

An accidental consequence.

He disliked accidental virtue almost as much as deliberate virtue.

"I didn't do it for you."

The creature continued looking at him.

Then repeated:

**THANK.**

Kokoronowarui stared.

Long enough to make the moment uncomfortable for both species.

Finally—

he turned away.

"Annoying."

He continued walking.

The creature did not follow this time.

Kokoronowarui made it seven steps.

Stopped.

Looked toward a damaged control panel.

The ship's engines were failing.

The prisoners would die if the vessel lost power entirely.

He stared.

His machine side provided the problem.

His human side provided something worse.

He hated both.

Kokoronowarui walked to the panel.

Pulled it open.

Looked inside.

He understood almost none of it.

Five minutes later—

he understood more.

Ten minutes later—

emergency propulsion returned.

Kokoronowarui stepped away from the controls.

The three-fingered creature stared at him again.

He pointed at it.

"No."

Its mouth opened.

Kokoronowarui left before it could thank him.

---

He exited through the same airlock that had captured him.

Space returned.

No gravity.

His body adjusted instantly this time.

Behind him, the damaged vessel drifted.

Alive enough.

Ahead—

the blue water planet remained.

Still turning.

Still offensively intact.

Kokoronowarui looked toward it.

Then at his hands.

His right fist closed.

Not the same fist.

Hours ago it had learned how to dent a plate.

Now it had broken combat machines.

Cracked reinforced doors.

Destroyed an execution frame.

Entered the core of a ship.

His strength had grown.

His speed had grown.

His senses had grown.

But those were not the dangerous part.

The dangerous part was that he now had experience.

Real experience.

Small in quantity.

Absurd in density.

And unlike strength—

experience changed what he could do with everything else.

Kokoronowarui lifted one hand.

Punch.

Stopped.

Changed angle halfway.

Elbow.

Stopped.

Palm.

Grab.

Release.

His body flowed through possibilities.

Nothing finished.

Nothing sacred.

Nothing stable.

**Martialic.**

He understood the word better now.

His own hand-to-hand combat.

Not small.

Not borrowed.

Not complete.

Never complete.

A fighting system that hated becoming a system.

Kokoronowarui looked toward the blue planet.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then his eyes shifted elsewhere.

Again.

The universe had expected destination.

He offered unpredictability.

His mouth moved.

"Kiraida."

The word surprised him.

Kokoronowarui.

The name that had surfaced from whatever pieces had made him.

Kiraida.

Shorter.

Different.

Another version.

He considered it.

His identity did not need to remain untouched either.

Kiraida.

He hated the sound less.

That was practically affection.

He turned toward the stars.

Behind him floated a machine he had hated.

Behind that—

the remains of two planets.

Ahead—

everything else.

Kiraida moved.

Faster than before.

Much faster.

And somewhere inside the living-machine argument that formed his body, damaged tissue repaired, mechanical structures refined, neural pathways strengthened, new errors waited to become new techniques, and the experience of one impossible day continued multiplying through everything he had learned.

He was still less than two days old.

That fact was beginning to become everyone else's problem.

# **END OF CHAPTER 2**

## **HATING EVIL MACHINE**