AKAME ASSASINATION (67)
Blade work so clean, so refined, so impossibly precise—yes. That was what Saikyo Akame represented. That was the legend etched into every Vatican file, every whispered story in every dojo across the world.
'Even back then,' Junichi thought, his crimson eyes darting, tracking glimpses of white—fractions of motion, ghosts of intent—that flickered at the edges of his vision, 'you always used to beat me.'
His body moved on instinct alone, years of brutal combat compressed into reflex. The chain rattled as he whipped the stone daggers in defensive arcs, buying milliseconds.
'The fluidity of his motion. The marriage of man and blade. It's unlike anything I've ever seen.'
Let us be clear about Junichi's nature, dear reader. His alchemy—Earth Alchemy, to be precise—was not mere manipulation. Through the Forge of Creation, he didn't just move stone and metal; he rebuilt them. He broke matter down to its screaming atomic foundations and forged it anew in shapes of his choosing.
The twin daggers now spinning at the ends of their stone chain were perfect examples. They gave him reach. They gave him options. At mid-range, the chain became a whip, a lasso, a spinning shield. At long range, the daggers became projectiles that returned to his palms like loyal hounds.
Close quarters, however...
'A weakness,' he admitted silently, deflecting a thrust that would have opened his throat, 'that I'm sure he's accounted for over the years.
The building around them screamed.
Not in metaphor. The steel frame shrieked as their blades collided, the sheer concussive force of impact shattering debris before it could fall. Concrete turned to dust mid-air. Glass vaporized. Each collision drove them deeper into the structure, their speed accelerating, the rhythm of combat becoming something that existed outside normal time.
Then—silence.
The building gave one final, groaning sigh and collapsed completely. A tower of glass and steel, reduced to a pile of rubble and settling dust.
Two figures emerged from the cloud, walking side by side onto the empty freeway. Neither looked at the other. Both were unscathed. Not a single hit had landed.
The fight, it seemed, was closer than anyone could have predicted.
"You've grown soft." Junichi's voice cut through the settling haze, rough and dismissive. He held the chain taut beneath his armpits, the stone daggers dangling behind his shoulders like folded wings. "I hate to say it, but you've grown soft."
"Really?"
"Duh!" Junichi snorted. "I didn't feel a thing. No offense, but I've fought fodder sorcerers with better edge alignment than that." He turned his head, a mocking smirk twisting his features. "Maybe this is a waste of—"
SLASH!
Pain exploded across his right palm.
Junichi stared down at his hand. His fingers—all five of them—were gone. Cleanly severed. The stumps didn't even bleed yet; the cut was too fast, too precise. For one surreal second, he simply... looked.
"The only time being wasted here," Akame said quietly, flipping Shizen in his grip—forward grip to reverse, blade running along his forearm, "is mine."
Junichi's smirk didn't fade. It widened.
"Oh," he breathed, genuine delight kindling in his predator's eyes. "You're gonna use that technique."
TAP.
Akame's free hand brought the sheath up. The blade's guard met the lacquered wood with a sound like a bell striker kissing bronze.
TAP. TAP.
Each impact shook the air. Junichi could feel it—the tension bleeding into the environment, building like pressure before a storm.
"I heard the First Sword can mix and mash techniques from every school," Junichi said, his ruined hand already beginning to regenerate, new fingers pushing through the stumps like pale seedlings through soil. "I wonder if you'll use mine as well."
He let the chain slide through his grip, the daggers spinning lazily.
"But I do promise to spare you," he added, a cunning, almost gentle smile appearing on his scarred face, "if you give up now."
Junichi's answering grin was feral, ecstatic, alive.
"FUCK NO!" The roar tore from his chest, primal and joyful. "DON'T YOU DARE HOLD OUT ON ME! I'LL TAKE EVERY SINGLE HIT! YOU HEAR ME?! YES! I'VE BEEN LIVING FOR THIS REASON!"
To fight.
To die.
To feel the razor edge of existence in a moment of absolute violence.
Akame saw it. The hunger. The worship of the clash. The belief that a man's purpose began and ended with the sword in his hand and an enemy before him.
It was a stark reminder. A mirror of a path he'd walked himself, so long ago he'd almost forgotten the weight of those footsteps.
'Its coming back to me,' Akame thought, the rhythm of the tapping sheath steady in his grip. 'There was a moment I'd never forget. Or rather... one I chose never to forget.'
What is the purpose of wielding a sword?
Is there really honor in killing?
Why did it have to be me?
'Now that I think about it, I was a brat back then. And I was led astray. I walked down the wrong path, and I kept walking until the blood was up to my neck. Why is it that I never learned?'
He looked at Junichi—at the fire in his eyes, the desperate joy in his smile. At a man who had found meaning in annihilation.
'I can't let them go down that path too. There's so much darkness out there. Darkness that once filled my heart as well.'
The asphalt beneath Akame's feet cracked. The tension in his muscles alone was enough to shatter stone.
'I can't afford to lose now. Not when I have their future in my hands.'
SWOOOSH.
Junichi didn't see it coming.
No one could have.
The world became a sketchbook, and Akame was the crayon—streaks of white and black drawn across reality in chaotic, overlapping lines. What had once been a man with a sword was now a storm of motion so fast that shape itself dissolved. Form became suggestion. Intent became afterimage.
Ah.
Junichi's smile, impossibly, grew even wider.
This. THIS. This was the power he'd wanted to see. The legend made flesh. The demon wearing a man's face.
"GIVE IT! I'LL TAKE IT ALL!"
And he did.
For one crystalline moment, there was nothing but chaos—steel meeting steel in a symphony of destruction. Junichi's body moved beyond thought, beyond instinct, into something purer. His daggers spun, parried, blocked. His head snapped aside as a thrust aimed for his eye parted only air. His knee rose to deflect a kick aimed at his ribs.
Blades collided. Shockwaves erupted. The freeway behind them dissolved—concrete turned to gravel, gravel to dust, dust to nothing.
***
SORCERER ASSOCIATION HQ — WAR ROOM
The screens turned red.
All of them.
Alarms screamed in overlapping, discordant waves. Technicians dove for their stations, fingers flying across keyboards, voices rising in panicked chorus.
"What the hell is happening down there?!" Rika's voice cut through the chaos, sharp as a blade.
"The F.E. readings are—they're insane!" an analyst shouted from across the room. "I've never seen numbers like this! It's off every scale we have!"
"Buildings are collapsing! The shockwaves alone are causing seismic activity! We're getting reports of tremors from three sectors over!"
"PUT IT ON SCREEN!" Rika roared, slamming her palm against the console.
Silence.
The technicians exchanged glances. The room's temperature seemed to drop.
"Madame..." one of them stammered, his face pale, "...we can't."
Rika's eyes narrowed to slits. "What do you mean, you can't? Why the fuck not?!"
"Because, Madame..." The technician's voice trembled. He pointed at the main display, where the data stream had become a waterfall of static and error codes. "Their speed. It's... it's..."
"It's WHAT?"
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly.
"It's above Mach 100,000. And rising."
The room went silent.
Rika stared at the screaming static, at the numbers that refused to stabilize, at the impossibility of what she was being told.
Mach 100,000.
11.2% THE SPEED OF LIGHT.
Two men, somewhere in the ruins of her city, were fighting at a velocity that belonged to physics textbooks and thought experiments. Not flesh and blood. Not swords and chains.
They were rewriting the definition of what was possible.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, beneath the cold calculation of strategy and the weight of command, a single, unbidden thought surfaced:
'Akame... what have you become?'
DO YOU REMEMBER (2)-- END!