The Trancer

  “You’re much more isolated than I am.”

  Forgetting for a moment that Divider was still crouching nearby, Mikawa stood stock-still.

  How could he say something so stupid to Liquidizer without fearing for his life? He ridiculed the boy silently, but then his thoughts shifted. Despite himself, annoyance bubbled up in his mind.

  …Fear? Fear of the outside world?

  Don’t be stupid. I love all the water that fills this world. And I hate the humans who pollute that water without realizing its worth. What part of that sounds like fear to you? I don’t believe it for a second. I’m not afraid of anything…

  Then someone’s voice rang in his ears, unbidden.

  Then why won’t you wake me up?

  “Huh…?”

  Why are you still keeping me asleep? Why do you leave me alone in such a cold, dark place…?

  “…B-because…if it melted…if the ice melted…”

  Are you afraid? Are you afraid of what might happen to me if the ice melts…?

  Mikawa was shaken out of his trance by Liquidizer’s voice, low and tense, as she addressed Isolator.

  “…I see. Well, let’s see you protect them, then, boy. The people you love…and yourself.”

  Blinking his eyes back into focus, Mikawa saw that the snow falling in Liquidizer’s immediate vicinity was being turned into large drops of water. Her intense power was seeping out, liquefying the snowflakes without even touching them. Just moments ago, Mikawa had been telling himself that he knew no fear, but at this moment he felt it deep in his heart. Liquidizer, the incredibly powerful and usually calm and collected Ruby Eye, had dropped her languid smile. She was angry.

  Mikawa’s instincts told him he should get away now to avoid being involved in this, but he couldn’t move. He needed to know.

  How was the ashen-haired boy planning to protect his friends?

  Trapped in the ground, Accelerator obviously couldn’t move, and neither could the seriously wounded Divider or the camouflaged boy treating the dying young girl. If he wanted to protect them, he would have to fight without running away. But fighting Liquidizer empty-handed was an impossible task. The gray-haired boy must know this all too well.

  Liquidizer took a step forward.

  At almost the same moment, the black hunter known as Isolator broke into a run.

  Watching him, Mikawa noticed that Isolator’s feet were floating slightly above the ground. This must be his ability, the “invisible barrier.” Leaving strange footprints in the snow, the young man dashed in a straight line, simply charging forward with no apparent plan.

  As he ran, he pulled his left hand back, forming a fist and winding up with an exaggerated motion. He clearly had no knowledge of martial arts or how to throw a proper punch. It should be easy for the nimble Liquidizer to dodge his attack. But perhaps planning to take the hit and liquefy his arm, she simply stood with her right hand outstretched.

  No matter what substance the barrier was made out of, Mikawa knew that once it touched Liquidizer’s hand, it would melt in an instant, followed immediately by the liquefaction of the fist itself.

  However…

  An unpleasant cracking sound echoed, and Liquidizer’s hand snapped backward. Two of her fingers were bent at unnatural angles.

  It’s not solid matter!

  Unconsciously, Mikawa’s face warped into a smile.

  If Liquidizer couldn’t melt it, that meant it wasn’t ice, glass, diamond, or anything like that. So was it some kind of energy, a powerful repulsive force, which warded off all chemical elements around it? If so, the code name Isolator was truly a fitting one.

  He guessed that Liquidizer must have been surprised, too, but the sailor suit–clad woman hadn’t stopped moving. As if she didn’t feel any pain from her two broken fingers, she smoothly twisted her body and moved closer to the ground.

  The young man moved to throw another punch with his left hand, but before he could do that, Liquidizer’s hand touched the ground beneath his feet.

  Gloop. The boy’s body sank downward. Liquidizer quickly retreated, her hand still touching the ground. Even if the boy’s barrier was an immaterial field, his damaged right arm was proof that escaping from concrete was still no easy task. And this time, he was trapped in the ground that stretched out endlessly in all directions. Being buried in that, even if he could escape somehow within a few hours, his friends would all be long dead.

  “…Oh.” Mikawa heard a strange noise escape his own throat.

  The boy who had been sinking into the ground just moments ago pulled himself out with a single step. Concentric circles formed in the asphalt-colored pond that Liquidizer had created. But he didn’t sink. The liquid, its molecular forces manipulated by Liquidizer, had a specific gravity of close to zero, yet the boy was standing calmly in the middle.

  Did he have a floating ability? No, it was something else.

  The ability that created his isolation power was isolating him even from the Earth’s gravity.

  The protective shell Minoru produced held many secrets that even he didn’t understand.

  Why did there seem to be an unlimited amount of oxygen inside? Why was visible light the only thing that could penetrate it? And what was the low rhythmic noise that he always heard inside?

  Compared to these questions, the problem of why he could walk without slipping despite the shell’s zero coefficient of friction seemed trivial. So Minoru hadn’t even stopped to consider it strange, never mind trying to figure out why.

  But now, standing upright above the swamp that Liquidizer’s ability had created, he felt as if he understood. When he was walking while in the protective shell, he wasn’t moving forward by using friction to push off the ground. He was fixing himself to the area he stepped on—in other words, the point of contact with material outside the shell—by force of will. That was how he had walked down the slippery stairs without falling and how he could run at full speed even on a sandy beach.

  Since he was still affected by gravity, he would, of course, sink if he was to suddenly find himself in the middle of liquid. But if he prepared in advance, it would be possible to deal with. All he had to do was fix himself on the point of contact with the liquid’s surface.

  Standing on the surface of the asphalt lake, Minoru turned his gaze toward Liquidizer, who had her hand on the ground nearby.

  Her eyes showed no hint of emotion from behind the thick black-rimmed glasses. But she was giving off a level of pressure that seemed strong enough to blow Minoru away if he let down his guard for even a second. Clearly, he had found a way around her “liquefied ground” attack, though that was only one small aspect of her abilities.

  However, he couldn’t show any fear. It was doubtful Minoru could beat her with nothing in his arsenal but an amateurish punch—or whether she would even let him land another hit—but he had to drive her away somehow. And he had to do it quickly. Suu needed serious medical care, more than DD’s emergency treatment could provide.

  Which meant there was only one power he could rely on in this situation: Yumiko’s acceleration. They would have to attack her with the same combination strike that had beaten Igniter.

  Minoru took a big leap back, landing near Yumiko, whose legs were still trapped in asphalt. He deactivated his shell and felt, along with the biting cold, the chilling murderous intent of the Ruby Eye pressing down on him. Though it was coming from Liquidizer, her face was still completely expressionless as she stood up. The asphalt hardened again, forming a smooth surface that looked like black glass.

  “…Don’t worry about me,” Yumiko murmured, her voice strained. “Just focus on fighting.” It looked as though she had exerted all her strength trying to get out. Her tights were ripped where they touched the asphalt, and the exposed skin was bleeding.

  Turning his eyes back toward his opponent, Minoru answered quietly, “No…I need your power to do that.”

  “But…you can’t bring me inside the shell…”

/>   True, his attempts to accept her into his protective shell hadn’t succeeded in a single one of their experiments. But Minoru suspected that he had some idea of the reason why.

  In the past few days, why had he been able to bring Suu Komura into his shell countless times while continuing to reject Yumiko? Most likely, it was because by bringing her into his protective shell, he would be contradicting the very purpose of its existence by transforming it from a protective ability into a strong offensive power. Unconsciously, Minoru was afraid of that contradiction. He was afraid of using this ability, created from Wakaba’s final wish of a safe and sacred place for him, to hurt someone.

  But right now…

  Right now, unlike any other time, he needed that power. In order to protect the people he cared about. And so…

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. Then he put his left arm around Yumiko, drawing her toward him, and activated his ability.

  He couldn’t hear the sound of the hardened asphalt breaking. But cracks radiated out in the ground around Yumiko’s body, and both of her legs were set free.

  For just a moment, he felt Yumiko’s body tremble as she was pressed up against him in the shell. Her voice, too, was shaking as she wrapped her arms around his back and pressed her forehead into his shoulders. “…H-honestly…if it was that easy, you should’ve done it sooner.”

  “I’m sorry.” Once Minoru had apologized, they both turned at once to look at Liquidizer, who was standing about nine meters away. Despite the fact that Accelerator had been freed from her trap, the Ruby Eye’s expression was unchanged. If anything, she looked more focused than ever.

  Just as he was thinking that, Minoru saw a flash of red in her eyes underneath her glasses, but it was no illusion. She put out her right hand with the palm facing upward, raising it high in the air.

  “Run!!” Yumiko cried, and Minoru took a single step sideways. Yumiko accelerated the movement, instantly sliding them more than three meters across the pavement. At the same time, the spot they’d been standing in just a moment ago burst into a geyser of liquid.

  “?!”

  Minoru gasped sharply, staring in shock as the liquid quickly solidified again, forming a rocky stalagmite more than nine meters tall. No, it was more like a spear. But they had no time to be surprised, as Liquidizer moved again, using both hands this time.

  Right as they jumped out of the way, a second spear of rock shot up from the ground, grazing the shell. Then a dark brown torrent of liquid rose up from directly underfoot, clouding Minoru’s vision. But of course, the liquefied gravel couldn’t scratch the protective shell.

  Then Minoru suddenly felt his whole body suddenly trapped in place. The spurt of liquefied asphalt and soil had covered the entire shell and then solidified around it, obstructing his movements.

  “Rrgh…!” Minoru put all his strength into moving his limbs, breaking through the wall of rock. With Yumiko’s ability, they used a slide dash to put distance between themselves and Liquidizer.

  It seemed that the range of her ability to remotely liquefy and solidify the ground was about nine meters. Liquidizer stopped her movements and smiled again, and Yumiko glared at her.

  “We can’t get anywhere near her!”

  “…No, we can. With your acceleration, we can smash through rock like that without a problem. There’s no time to lose. Let’s end this with our next charge!”

  Minoru braced his legs firmly, lightly lifted Yumiko into his arms, and got into position for an all-out dash. All they needed to do was crash into Liquidizer one time, and she should be out of commission. Minoru and Yumiko together weighed at least one hundred kilograms. There was no way she could take a hit from that at ultrahigh speed without being hurt.

  “Here goes!” he shouted, and launched himself forward with all his might.

  Watching his former master, Liquidizer, bring out even more new abilities—liquefying ground from a distance, jetting it upward, and hardening it again—Mikawa sharply sucked in his breath.

  Just the ability to liquefy the ground from almost nine meters away was terrifying enough, but he could accept that level of power from her. She had scarcely moved from the same spot in the past three minutes. Given that she was in the midst of a battle, perhaps she had synchronized with the ground around her, controlling it for a ridiculously long time.

  But did the ability to create a spire of ground far taller than a person fit into that theory? The Syndicate’s research had long since proven that all Third Eye users’ abilities, whether red or black, were fundamentally based around the manipulation of atoms and molecules. Igniter, for instance, had simply been able to manipulate oxygen molecules, and Biter had altered and reconfigured his body by manipulating protein molecules.

  Within this infinite variety of possible abilities, Mikawa’s phase transition abilities and Liquidizer’s closely resembled each other. That was why she had taken him on as a pupil. No emotional reasons were involved.

  When Mikawa changed water into vapor or ice, he was controlling the vibration of the water molecules. If he stopped the vibration, the molecules would join together and form ice, and if he made them vibrate intensely, they would fly about and form water vapor. That was the full extent of his power. He couldn’t, for example, form water out of hydrogen and oxygen or manipulate the form or movement of the water.

  Liquidizer, on the other hand, could manipulate any solid material within her reach, weakening the van der Waals forces that made it solid. She wasn’t changing the vibration of the molecules like Mikawa, so her ability didn’t produce heat. And she couldn’t manipulate something that was already a liquid. In theory, the full extent of her ability should just be liquefaction. Any other manipulation, like causing her target to shoot up into the air regardless of gravity, should be impossible. If she could do that, then the Syndicate, or at least its executives, must be hiding some logical knowledge that Mikawa wasn’t aware of…

  All these thoughts flashed through Mikawa’s mind in only a moment. During that time, the gray-haired boy brought Accelerator into his protective field and used the help of her ability to dodge two, then three attacks from rocky spears. More accurately, the third one caught them as it covered their shield and then solidified again, but it was too weak to hold them for long before they smashed through it.

  His resolve perhaps strengthened by that success, the boy called Isolator turned to face Liquidizer, who was standing near the wall of the abandoned factory, and took an assertive stance. A powerful light filled the eyes of Accelerator, who was pressed close beside him, glaring at their target.

  After a moment, the boy gave a soundless cry and launched himself forward. The two charged at a frightening speed, but to Mikawa, who was so focused on the battle that he forgot the pain of the wound in his left shoulder, the actions that followed seemed to play out in slow motion.

  First, Liquidizer raised both hands above her head, creating multiple earthen spears from the ground at the same time. Immediately, the spikes hardened directly in the Jet Eyes’ path, but they were quickly pulverized by the pair’s charge. The spears were formed from the earth and sand below, so they should have been about equal in hardness to natural rock once resolidified, but the process of gushing into the air before hardening probably created too many air bubbles in the center, weakening the structures. They would certainly be hard enough to stop an ordinary human body, but against the boy’s defensive shield, they were utterly useless.

  Then, with her rocky spears destroyed, Liquidizer raised her right hand up again, as if in a last-ditch effort to defend herself.

  Just as Minoru had predicted, the rock spires that Liquidizer produced weren’t strong enough to stop the combination attack of his protective shell and Yumiko’s acceleration.

  Smashing through the first two spears slowed their speed a little, but they still had plenty of force behind them as they approached the enemy. As Minoru lowered his head and braced himself for direct impact, suddenly, Liquidizer raised her r
ight hand a third time.

  This time, instead of opening her palm, she extended only her long index finger. Then she aimed it directly at Minoru.

  A terrifying scene unfolded before his eyes.

  The steel frames that held up the abandoned factory behind her suddenly melted into bent half circles, twisted together in midair, and formed three enormous metal spears that launched directly toward Minoru and Yumiko.

  There was no time to dodge them. Just a meter away from Liquidizer, the metal spears crashed into Minoru’s protective shell.

  Inside the shell, they didn’t hear any roar or crash, and the shock of the impact itself felt strangely gentle, as if they were bumping into a polyurethane foam wall back in the experiment room. The biggest effect was just dull, heavy resistance against their movement. The spears were bent and crushed before Minoru’s eyes, but the speed of their charge was greatly reduced as well.

  Minoru’s face was only ten centimeters away from Liquidizer’s when their momentum from inside the protective shell stopped. For just a second, he locked eyes with the powerful Syndicate Ruby Eye.

  The eyes behind her thick glasses were at once like bottomless pools of darkness and perfectly polished mirrors. Her gaze seemed to suck in Minoru’s soul without revealing a single hint of herself or the inner pain that she surely carried as a Third Eye host.

  In her eyes was nothing but rejection. Not a single trace of desire for anything. Just abject enmity toward everything around her.

  A smile spread across Liquidizer’s beautiful face, as if she sensed Minoru’s fear.

  Immediately, the three metal spears pressed against Minoru’s protective shell dissolved into liquid again, spreading over the surface of the shell in an instant. He heard Yumiko let out a sharp gasp as the metal blocked their vision. “Oh no…!”

  We have to get away!

  Minoru put all his strength into his right leg. But just as he was about to launch them away, all his movement was stopped in an instant. The thick layer of metal covering the protective shell had hardened again, trapping them inside. He tried to break through it as they had when they were suspended in rock before, but this time there was no sign of success, no matter how hard he pushed.