[PROLOGUE]
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What makes someone worthy of recognition?
I thought once to myself, why do people care about others?
Relevant individuality must come first before anything else.
People always say, the world would be boring if everybody was the same.
The very thing that makes people relevant. The fact of the matter is, people do live in their own world.
So I question myself…
Am I relevant to people?
God… I don't even know what the meaning of truth is anymore.
It's like the world has put me in a black space, where every time I try to leave, I just return deeper into the abyss.
Isn't that painful?
Neither capable of asking questions nor receiving answers. Just a non-existent world of irrelevancy and ignorance.
But I guess…just like the beginning of the universe, something has to start somewhere, somehow, at some-point…
I guess that's the same truth for all answers…
…
——————————————————————————
An eerie sound that drilled through my head that woke me up as I grunted from the solid ground.
"Is everyone alright!?"
A familiar voice called
I slowly opened my eyes as they followed the direction of the voice. There she was, Yoshida kneeling before me as she was calling me.
"Onii-chan, wake up!"
"Please tell me you are alright?"
(•᷄- •᷅ ;)
She shook me, gently.
As I let out a soft groan slowly lifting my upper body up.
"Oh thank goodness, you are."
Yoshida let out a sigh of relief while holding her chest.
"And still alive."
I commented as I held my head when the ringing in my ears faded.
"What happened?"
I rubbed my temple, trying to piece together the fragments in my mind.
"The last thing I remember was a big explosion from the driver's seat, and then—"
I cut off my own sentence as I then observes my surroundings.
The limousine was a twisted, unrecognisable carcass of black steel and burning fuel.
Rain pouring down over the city.
Dark clouds hung above the skyline as thunder rumbled in the distance.
What was once a busy intersection had become a scene of destruction.
Several blocks around the blast zone had been reduced to ruins.
Storefront windows were gone.
Traffic lights hung from bent poles.
Pieces of concrete and twisted metal littered the streets.
Cars that had been caught near the explosion were overturned or crushed beneath debris.
Some still burned.
Others had been thrown into buildings by the force of the blast.
Flames flickered throughout the wreckage despite the heavy rain.
Black smoke rose from the center of the destruction, forming a massive pillar that stretched high into the sky.
The smoke could be seen from districts far away.
Sirens echoed from every direction.
Police, firefighters and ambulances were all rushing toward the source of the disaster.
The explosion had sent countless shards of glass and fragments of metal flying through the surrounding streets.
The roads were covered with them.
Pedestrians who had been unlucky enough to be nearby suffered the consequences.
A man stumbled through the rain while clutching his shoulder. A jagged piece of metal protruded from his flesh as he fell face flat down to the concrete ground.
A woman sat against a shattered wall, blood running down the side of her face from dozens of small cuts caused by flying glass.
A crying child tugging on the sleeve of an arm outstretched underneath the piles of rubble, calling out for its parent.
Several people lay motionless on the pavement.
Others crawled desperately across the ground, trying to reach safety.
Cries for help echoed through the streets.
Some called for family members.
Some screamed in pain.
Others simply stared at the devastation around them, unable to process what had happened.
The smell of smoke filled the air, mixed with burning metal, fuel and blood.
All mixed together beneath the endless rain.
Emergency responders were already arriving at the edge of the destruction.
But even they hesitated.
The scale of the damage was difficult to comprehend.
It looked less like a terrorist attack or an accident, and more like a natural disaster had struck.
Rainwater flowed through the streets, carrying ash, blood, and broken glass toward clogged drains.
The downpour continued without mercy.
As if the sky itself was trying to wash away the aftermath.
Yet no amount of rain could hide what had happened here.
At the center of the devastation.
At the origin of the explosion.
Smoke drifted around the remains of a ruined limousine.
The vehicle was barely recognizable anymore.
I watched in slight horror as my chest had a faint of tightness.
The disgusting stench spreading of blood mixed with burning gas made me wanna vomit alone.
I looked away with a hint of agony as I spoke.
"How did this happen…?"
Her expression was grim and filled with malice as she looked down to the ground with shaking lips.
"It was an assassination attempt on Yoshida."
Kubo spoke calmly.
"I don't know the exact details either, but…"
"Some kind of abnormal creature attacked with us in that limousine."
"Shouldn't we help the people the people who got injured?"
"We can't…"
"Haven't you noticed, Hoshiro?"
"The assassin is still out there, waiting to ambush us."
"Thankfully Yoshida's powers managed to get us unharmed from the explosion and keeps us separated from the assassin themselves."
That's right, before I even noticed it. Where we were standing, the heavy rain wasn't touching us.
"…this."
The rain tapped lightly against the invisible barrier around us, distorting the world beyond it like a warped mirror.
I looked around in confusion.
I saw a thin force field surrounding us.
It looked like air pressing on opposite directions against each other.
A transparent barrier without thickness, held together purely by pressure.
I looked toward Kubo standing as he was watching from a distance.
I stood up, checking my arms.
No burns, no cuts, not a single tear in my clothing.
"You did this?"
I asked, looking straight at Yoshida in a slight hint of surprise as she nodded with a proud and excited expression.
"Yup!"
"My ability is called Tenzetsu Kekkai"
(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
"I'm so glad to show it to you finally, though not the situation I had hoped it to be in my head."
Yoshida said in relief, she shows that she glad to finally show her ability to her step brother.
I then asked,
"How does something like this even work?"
I said while observing the depth of the barrier.
"Oh! Oh!"
Yoshida said with excitement with her hand raised like a student knowing the answer to the teacher's question.
"You see, my mind goes brrrr"
"And then I think"
"And then it just becomes existent!"
Yoshida's enthusiasm collides to her coherent elucidation, making it not so transparent as it sounds.
"Okay maybe not how it sounds."
"It's like counting numbers!"
"But in order to keep my powers stable, I'd need to REALLY focus."
"Even talking now is still a struggle."
"If you really want a data dump, Mr. Yashira could go in detail, he trained and studied my powers since I was a little kid after all."
"In anyone could give the right information, it's him."
Kubo then stood closer to us as he cleared his throat and looked straight at me.
"Well, I did wanna explain it to you later. But now is as good as ever. Seeing the situation at hand."
"Listen closely."
"All Luminary's powers depend on the individual identity of one's being and essence."
"Each being ultimately unique and having autonomous capabilities."
"Tenzetsu Kekkai being a primal example."
"Her ability allows her to generate invisible defensive structures through direct manipulation of electron distributions at the atomic scale."
Kubo said from as he then walked a distance, he crouched and picked up a small pebble.
He then flicked the pebble forward.
It crossed the air as it impacted on the border of Yoshida's field. In an instance, it vanished without a trace.
My eyes narrowed.
"…It didn't hit anything."
I spoke in surprise.
Kubo continued, watching the empty space.
"By concentrating and electromagnetically confining dense electron distributions within a designated region of space, she creates what researchers refer to as an Electromagnetic Exclusion Field."
Kubo adjusted his sun glasses. The silence stretched, filled only by distant sirens. He gestured slightly toward the air.
"Any incoming object experiences overwhelming Coulombic repulsion the moment it crosses the barrier."
"The result is structural failure at the atomic level bond breakdown, ionisation and redistribution of kinetic energy across the field."
The pebble's impact point still hung in my mind. Nothing, then disappearance. He straightened his posture. A final glance toward Yoshida.
"It adapts to reinforcing local electron density in response to stress, increasing resistance proportionally."
Silence returned.
"So thats why the enemy hasn't attack us yet"
I remarked, when I finally said.
"If the assassin or something else tries to enter through Yoshida's barrier. Just like the pebble, their atomic structures will be ripped apart instantaneous, wiping their entire existence away."
"And just like she said, this ability requires extreme focus, she's calculating all sorts of mathematical formulas and precision-"
Suddenly, steps from a distance could be heard coming. You could hear the steps of pebbles kicked away by bare feet
"Wow, that's really terrifying for a pop-idol to have that kind of an ability."
"But honestly, it's such a cliché with vulnerabilities."
A familiar child's voice could be heard from emerging through the smoke.
Everybody's attention went to the direction of the voice. A child-like figure stepped out, revealing herself.
"It's you"
Kubo said in a low exerted tone
"It truly is horrifying."
"Imagine just one day, minding your own business walking through her invisible barrier and then"
She made a pop sound through her lips.
"Poof, gone like a bubble."
Yoshida stepped up, with a solemn expression with a hint of anger behind.
"Who are you?"
Kubo spoke out
The child lets out a sinister giggle when she spoke.
"I am Omori Kimei."
"I'm a bio-engineered artificial being."
"I was created by the members of The First Waters."
"The First Waters?"
Kubo spoke out in small tone abruptly.
"You know those people?"
I asked turning my head to Kubo in confusion as he answered.
"I can't say that I am well informed but from what I know."
"They're an occultist shadow organisation, who mass manipulate the politics of foreign countries for their own providence."
"Their philosophy lines up with the Egyptian mythological being Nun."
"They believe Nun will return to one day to drown all of creation back into watery chaos to destroy and recreate."
I looked directly at the child.
Her grass-green hair stretches from her head to her heels.
Her small figure entangled by her hair.
That apathetic smile of no mercy or morality, with her gold yellow eyes lacking a certain hint of life.
A glint in the eye that strips away the exterior, revealing the true soul within.
Ten years of isolation shattered the moment I looked into a mirror. A deluge of flashbacks hit me all at once.
But the real shock was looking myself in the eye for the first time in a decade, seeing exactly what that place had carved into my soul.
"Hey…"
I said in a cold demeanour tone as I walked a few steps forward. Inches away from Yoshida's barrier but close enough range to Omori.
"The better question is, what do you want with us?"
The girl's eyes met mine as if she was lost in thought for a few seconds. She started snickering, sounding near snake-like.
"Isn't it obvious?"
She said as if he asked the most ridiculous question ever. Throwing her arm forward with her index finger pointing towards Yoshida.
"The girl, right there."
Yoshida clenched her fist pressed against her chest slightly lowered her head with a sweat dripping out her forehead.
She displayed visible discomfort regarding the unfortunate circumstances confronting the group. She then forced a smile as she said.
"So y-you're a fan, I see…"
(ᵕ • ᴗ •)
"W-Well!"
"If you just wanted my autograph, y-you could have just asked!"
"Didn't need to destroy a whole street of people and several city blocks…eheh…"
(ᵕ⸝⸝• ᴗ •ᵕ)
Yoshida, clearly the lighten up the situation in grim moments. Omori was clearly stunned for a moment as she then snickered.
She started laughing, her cackle violating the souls of the ones who heard it. She then began to calm down as her face shadows.
"You've got humour, I'll give you that."
She then placed her hands right underneath her eye-lids.
"But we have bigger plans for you."
"The First Waters drive on human agony. In order to achieve our goals, we must feed the demonic force with agonising horror of the human subconscious."
She slowly pulled them down as she rolled her eyes almost to the back of her head.
"The byproduct of human cynicism called The Miasma shall manifest our savior into the physical world and bring all of creation back to him."
"In order to do so, we must destroy human faith through the Luminary."
"Once I get you in my hands, the gruesome things we will do to you."
Omori in sight of horror started to pull even harder onto her eye-lids. Suddenly the environment that was already in tragedy, became void as Omori's aura began to produce what could be only described as madness and fear.
"We will record all the torture we did to you and send it all over the globe."
As she spoke, the world lost its colour. All that there was left was black and white. Omori radiating complete shadow and darkness as her eyes are the only thing visible. My vision began to blur as everything began to shook in my sight.
"First, we will drain every inch of blood in your body and keep you alive as we use it as source for pentagrams and stain water scarcity of many countries."
"After that, we will make you violate you in every way humanely possible and impossible."
As she kept ranting on these frighting images, The three of us lost our rhythm of breathing. Omori's insane presence creates a build of intense fear as she kept on.
"Once we've broken you beyond recognition and feel generous, we will sell what is left of you, trafficking, slavery, organs, you name it."
But then she stopped as the world gained its colour again, she let go of her eye lids as her eyes went to my direction. Her mood switched slowly as she said in low pitched tone in the end of her breath.
"But you…"
She looked back at me with those same soulless eyes. She then moved her finger's direction towards me. Pointing to my very existence as if judging me on sight.
"We, the product of The First Waters see humans radiating their solitary aura."
"You have non from what I see."
"You look human, but you seem unclassified as something that refers as (human)."
A small gasp escaped Yoshida's mouth. Not in a way when somebody drops a bombshell on you. But in a way when taken offence.
"You're like a wandering soul in the empty abyss that was staring at you back."
She let out a few giggles.
"What value does a living being like you have?"
Omori said as I took her question into my mind. My reaction did not change. It was not like I was surprised in the first place about her question nor did I feel much about it.
But unlike me, I felt a presence shift aura next. I turned my head toward the direction of Yoshida.
Her expression in sudden shifts. With her eyes shadowed by her front hair.
"Oh she's done it now…"
Kubo said he glanced at Yoshida.
"hey…"
Yoshida spoke in a low-demeanour, with a hint of anger. The electromagnetic field began to spike up. Losing its invisibility as the electrons began to form visible orange walls.
"Who told you to speak to my brother like that?"
Yoshida said as she stepped forward. I couldn't help but feel the unease on how Yoshida shifted her mood so fast.
"Yoshida…"
"What are you-"
But then Kubo stopped Hoshiro from saying anything. With a hand gripping on his shoulder.
"I'd take a step back if I were you."
Kubo dragged him a step backwards from Yoshida.
"What we're going to witness now is a realm beyond human reasoning."
They both stared at what's going to happen not even attempting to blink.
Omori watched how the current events unfold here.
"Heh, so you got offended I called your brother a creature."
"So that's how the big pop star gets triggered.
Yoshida didn't answer her as she grinned her teeth, stopping her tracks as she stretched both arms forward clapping her hands together.
"TENZETSU KEKKAI!!"
The barrier previously set around began to fade away.
As the atoms began to hover around her hands. Orange particles with dense electricity sparking out.
"That's more like it!!"
Omori yelled out as she dashed towards Yoshida with immense speed. Jumping forward as she formed her left hand in the a claw ready to full on swing.
"You're mine!"
In a flashing light, a strike impacted with indescribable force. A shock felt through Omori, her face went cold as her eyes wide open. Before she could know or feel it. Her right arm became absent of presence as so was Yoshida who she thought was in front of her. Omori then thought by herself
"Fascinating…"
"I couldn't even see her move a finger."
"This turns out to be more fun than I thought."
Before her body shut down and crashed into the ground, she turned her head toward Yoshida. Even as she fell, she looked at her with a sideways glance.
I couldn't believe what was unfolding in front of my eyes. Yoshida seems like a completely different person when I first met her.
At first sight, you wouldn't assume a pop-star like her would have skilful combat with accurate aim towards her enemies.
Makes you wonder what kind of things has she been through to being capable of fighting like that.
I glanced back at Kubo, seeing how he looks at this analytically with every precision.
Not a second to delay Omori got up, facing to Yoshida.
"Your ability to destroy things on an atomic level is so philosophical."
Omori smiled widely showing off her fang teeth with her.
"Atoms require unity to become a concrete form."
"Just like humans form society, economy and history all together."
Raising the remainder of her right arm. The rush of human anatomy began to surge out of her arm. Bones, veins and flesh structuring back her former arm.
She clenched her hand and whirled her right arm back.
Kubo grind his teeth as a sweat rolled down his forehead.
"I can't believe this, The First Waters were capable of creating such fearsome creature like that. To be capable of regenerating her lost limbs as if it was a walk in the park."
Kubo then looked at Yoshida as he yelled out to her
"In order to destroy form, you must destroy the unity first."
"But you'll have to erase more than just a limb or two to stop me."
Yoshida turned around as Omori dashed with equal speed to her, both letting out their battle cry.
A fight erupted.
Kubo couldn't stand much longer at this sight as he yelled out.
"Yoshida!"
"Finish this already!"
"You can't let something like this live!"
He shouted out as a clear warning to Yoshida. Yoshida looked back at Kubo with sight as she understood.
At an instant, the barriers were set around Omori in the shape of a cube in arm's length away. Yoshida said in an angered tone.
"You killed innocent people!"
"You destroyed my city!"
"And most of all you offended by brother!!"
"I won't stand for this any longer!!!"
Yoshida raised her arm above her head, forming a karate chop hand.
"I'll wipe you out!"
But before she could do anything, Omori smirked sinisterly as she whispered in a low-tone.
"I win…"
Suddenly a splash of blood stained the street beneath Yoshida feet. Three long needles made of human flesh that came piercing into Yoshida.
The first one into her hand that was about to erase Omori, the second piercing her left shoulder and the last one thrusted into her left leg.
I've felt something for the first time in my life, the sight of Yoshida getting hurt then weighed on my unknowing heart.
As then an instinct just came out of his mouth as he rolled with it.
"YOSHIDA!!!!!!"
I yelled out at the top of my lungs.