“ARGH..!!!”

     Year 3031 on the Extinction Calendar. A derelict building.

The sound of a man's jaw snapping echoed through the cold air. Soon he made no sound at all, losing consciousness beside his terrified companion. The latter was still thrashing about in panic, but his arms and legs were still bound too securely.

The shadowy silhouette of a young male cut through the darkness. He held in his hand what looked like a blood-stained combination of a crowbar and an adjustable wrench.

“Mercenaries like you are all meat for the grinder once order is restored!! I really feel sorry for you—you’ve ruined your life before it’s even begun!”

They heard someone rushing up the stairs toward the room.

“Hey, Liberi! You better hurry up, some idiot called the cops.” Announced a taller, more mature mercenary.

“The cops?! No! Untie me!!”

Crack!

His knee is just hit viciously with the crowbar/wrench, leaving him writhing in pain and howling right before his mouth gets unceremoniously stomped on by his torturer’s foot.

“Sorry... sorry...” muttered the youngest, putting on a cold, impassive expression despite the torment he was inflicting. “And yet I just... I-I don’t know... sigh...”

His colleague at the door raised an eyebrow. “Hm? Hey, quit it. Don’t dwell on stuff right now."

"Get him to talk; I’ll wait for you in the van.” He added before returning the way he came.

     Within seconds, the moans of pain faded into low, despondent gasps, and all the while, “Liberi” let his gaze drift into the void as if dozing off, his mind gradually clearing of those cognitive parasites we call “thoughts.”

And so he withdrew his foot from his victim’s pitiful face, allowing him to immediately gasp out these words: “T-… The address is 12 Minster Street…”

The young male’s gaze met his one last time, firmer this time. But the eye-to-eye didn’t drag on. A gunshot rang out in the coldness, and before more trouble could catch up with them, Liberi ran down to the van to chase after them himself.

The bigger of the two drove the vehicle to the designated destination without saying a word.
Soon, the city center came into view—gray, smoky, and crumbling, with several bits and pieces missing here and there. Civilians who were still clinging to their homes sought to trade, haggle, but mostly just to wander around without the misfortune of getting ensnared in a trafficking ring or an armed robbery. In the van's passenger seat, no attention paid to the landscape, Liberi was so bundled up in his hoodie, he looked as if he might vanish into it. And he wasn't saying a word either.

His fine, ivory-colored hair framed the upper part of his face with sharp strands. His hands, buried in the pockets of his denim shorts which remained stained with dried blood. His legs faded into the shadows beneath the glove compartment, and then... In a mysterious undulation, an uncanny, dark smoke hovered in the air of the cab, constantly seeping like an inexplicable gas leak right out of both of Liberi's cheekbones.

This strange vapor eventually came to brush against the very human, focused face of the driver, or by his name, Koncel Carchmünd.

His hair rather was carefully slicked back, naturally purple, with a few quite aerodynamic silver strands. As for his attire, he could certainly be thought of as a tactical professional far more so than his colleague.

Not particularly bothered by the smoke, Koncel finally addressed Liberi in a formal tone: “All right.”

Liberi: “...”

Koncel: “You hear me?”

He looked up frantically. He definitely seemed to have forgotten where he was—or rather, he hadn’t noticed that the vehicle had just pulled up within a few steps of their destination.

“Oh, right,” he said, sitting up more properly.

Koncel pressed him. “What have you been thinking about this whole time? I don’t know what you were muttering about in the building, but you’re acting kind of weird. You killed that guy, didn’t you? Which means you won’t have a problem doing it a second or third time— right?”

Liberi: “...”

Despite this attempt at communication, Liberi still seemed out of it, not even looking at his interlocutor.

“Tsk...” Koncel pulled out the key, getting ready to open the door, and said in a fed-up tone, “Come on, get out. Go buy yourself some cider at the bar next door. Or a nice hot chocolate latte. I’m going to—”

But Liberi grabbed him by the forearm just in time. His hand was an unearthly charcoal black, but also studded with thousands of tiny silver flecks, barely glinting in the afternoon light.

Koncel: “...What now? I'd rather not waste any time, I mean it. ”

Liberi still wasn’t looking at him; he said, “Actually... I don’t understand."

Koncel: “Huh?”

Liberi: “He said he was going to give me the address, and then... He started messing with me as if I were the one helplessly tied up...”

Koncel listened in bewilderment.

Liberi: "He was... so confident that he’d be able to leave and get to safety somewhere... that he proudly let himself talk my ear off... As if he were in any position to feel out of the woods, he couldn’t help but open his mouth. "

“It’s just that I don’t understand your kind.” Liberi then suddenly let go of Koncel, before opening his own door and climbing out, stepping down from the van impatiently.

“H-hey! Wait a second!”

Liberi stared at the front door of this hideout, a deadpan, neutral expression on his face. It was an old building that had once belonged to the city’s now-bankrupt maritime import-export company; now it belonged to these criminals. Before Koncel could even catch up to him, Liberi kicked the door open and walked in without a moment’s hesitation.

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『 It's the year 3031 post-extinction, on an earth that a god once named “Spectris”. The Second Great Revolution is underway; many governments have forsaken their people to wage war against one another and ensure the survival of their technologies and wealth. It’s ironic when you consider that the people themselves sparked the conflicts in uprising first, having failed to heed the global panic-mongering of fearful kings. 』

『 Little by little, everything lost its meaning, so I, like many others, went off to fight. For what cause? No idea, but if my father is to be believed, we’re the kind of dogs who always have to bark at anyone who shows even the slightest trace of fear in their eyes. Call it instinct, I suppose. 』

『 The problem is, I’m really bad at taking a beating—I have zero pain tolerance. You usually get to see seasoned fighters get smashed into walls or something and then just get back up like nothing happened, but I simply hate when it hurts. I hate it. So one day, when my dad got into a fight with some mobsters, all I could do was watch as they knocked his teeth out. 』

『 I resented myself so much; I was completely paralyzed with fear at the mere sight of their cold steel, and I wondered what the hell I was doing there. I wondered why I had ever thought for a single moment that I belonged there. But ultimately, the silliest thing was to think those questions even made sense in the middle of all that mess, so I did something, just as devoid of sense, and followed those men into their truck. 』

『 With no plan whatsoever, and a miserable frame of mind, I had only one thing going through my head: to get one of them. Any one of them. Any way I could. I’d been hiding, and once I hit their base, I snatched a gun and shot at the first guy I came across. 』

『 I obviously missed my target, and my eardrums were blown to bits. Then I was just way too stunned to feel their beating. They beat the crap out of me, but I don’t even know if I remember the pain anymore. Good thing. I really hate it when it hurts. 』

『 And how about now? I think I’ve been strapped to this chair for hours already. I don’t even know why—maybe they’re demanding ransom from my old man, but he doesn’t have a dime to his name, so why…? Why am I still breathing? Why are my eardrums still working? Why do I keep hearing gunshots…? 』

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『 … I don’t understand a thing… 』

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"Hey, wake up."

『 … H-huh…? 』

"Get yourself together, we're here to rescue you. "

He opened his eyes...

                           

There they were in that warehouse; the ceiling was high enough that you couldn’t make out the countless cobwebs, and apparently, following a recent skirmish, the mobsters—just as numerous—had also blended into the concrete background, motionless.

A silence ensued.

A silence during which the young man, stuck in his chair, stared wide-eyed as he had never done before in his life.

Koncel: “Is he deaf?”

Liberi: “He doesn't look the type to be called Robert. Get a grip, let's look somewhere else—”

“AAAH!!” He yelled at them as if he’d just been brandished with red-hot iron. “Your... Your body!! What’s wrong with your body...?!”

Liberi: “Oh? You want me to tell you? Alright then, it all started six years ago when—”

Koncel: “Liberi, we don’t exactly have three hours of storytime ahead of us—we have to free the kidnapped people. And put your hoodie back on, please.”

Managing to keep his composure just a little, despite his trembling knees, the young man was intrigued, “...K-kidnapped people? There are others besides me...? W-wait... The mob. Did you guys just defeat all of them by yourselves...?”

Koncel: “Yeah, we’re mercenaries hired to track down these gangsters and free some of the folks they’ve kidnapped. Do you even know why you were captured? Are you really Robert Graleman?”

“H-huh? No! My name is Enarky. Enarky Daiskarolley!”

Enarky Daiskarolley. The boy’s face bore the telltale signs of a black eye, and a battered nose his spiky black hair strands couldn't hide away. It was with a split lip and a bodysuit of bruises that he introduced himself to the two mercenaries.

With his hands and feet bound, he was dressed in a neon orange jacket worn over a loose-fitting black shirt. And he wore black hakama pants over pairs of grey and orange sneakers. With a slight sense of relief, he watched as this otherworldly creature with a black, skeletal body hidden under clothes, pulled a clipboard onto his hand.

Liberi: “Hmm, nope, he's not on the list.”

Koncel: “Sigh... They must be upstairs...”

His relief quickly fizzled away.

Enarky exclaimed again in disbelief, “W-wait! What do you mean? You’re not going to rescue me? I’m a kidnapped person, aren’t I?”

Liberi replied calmly, already starting to turn away, “Not anyone on the list, you see?” He tapped his notebook, flashing a casual grin.

Enarky retorted with even more desperation in his voice, “B-but…! You… You can’t just leave me here!!”

Seeing this, Koncel was briefly about to take a step toward him, perhaps to help, but Liberi nudged him in the arm, urging him to continue their mission.

Enarky: “Hey!! What’s wrong with you?! Are you going to untie me or what?!”

Liberi: "..."

This time, however, Enarky swallowed hard at the moment he noticed the shift in the humanoid's glowing magenta gaze. Within a single, penetrating look, the young merc had instilled a raw, primal anxiety in the boy.

The tone of his voice dropped from nonchalance to the most icy of scorn. “You know, I’m starting to get real tired of these tied-up low lives yelling at me what to do.”

Without grasping what had possessed him to yell like that at hired soldiers, Enarky began breaking out in a sweat. It was just as his heart rate quickened, that Enarky became aware of the pain from his wounds again—a pain he had, until then, managed to block out of his five senses. He gasped. Liberi wasn’t even meeting his gaze anymore, but he was fixing his eyes on Liberi's face with the intensity of a cornered wild animal.

Liberi looked away for good and started to walk off, while Koncel, who still struggled to figure out his train of thought, watched him go before deciding to give chase.

Liberi thought. Just as I suspected, ordering people around in a situation like this is madness; all they're driven by is fear, nothing else.

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Enarky: "..."

Enarky: “Hey... I told you not to ignore me...”

                             

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Koncel’s wisdom manages to prevent Liberi from committing a massacre. In his misery, Enarky, still bound, is knocked to the floor onto the back of the chair, his mouth gaping as he catches his breath and his eyes comically rolled back.

Liberi can’t help but look down on this utterly laughable and pathetic spectacle, all the while pondering the enigmatic logic behind such impulsiveness. He had mocked him—what on earth could he have expected? How could such behavior be explained?

“Untie meee…” Enarky growled, fed up and desperate.

Koncel ends up taking the initiative, placing a hand on Liberi’s shoulder and saying, “Listen. I’ve made myself clear plenty of times, but I hate wasting time. I’m going to go check out the other corners on my own while you sort out whatever business you have with the idiot. Whatever it is.”

Liberi watched his partner depart without a word, and didn’t turn back to Enarky until he had left the premises.

Liberi: “...”

Enarky: “…Shit sucks…”

Liberi eyed him with as much patience as he could muster—what else did he have to say?

Enarky: "...I can't get myself up."

Before he could help himself, Liberi immediately burst out laughing. Enarky flew into a rage, "Stop your laughing and untie me!!—"

Grave mistake. Liberi pulls himself on top of him.

                              

to be continued...