The dust, thick as a shroud, swirled between us, slowly settling to reveal the wreckage. My fist still trembled from the impact—knuckles bloodied, veins alight with something not just power, but intense pressure. I'd felt bone shift under my punch, something inside Vance give. I'd hit him dead in the chest, and for a fleeting second, I could swear I felt his heartbeat stutter.
Vance Krait was a silhouette through the haze. He landed on his feet where the wall met the floor—his boots scraping concrete. A faint tremor ran through his frame, quickly suppressed, before he straightened to his usual rigid posture. No stumble. No collapse. He just… stood. Slowly, deliberately, he wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. A faint smirk curled at the edge of his lips—not mocking, not triumphant. Calculating.
"…Impressive," he said, his voice low, resonating through the suddenly quiet warehouse. "I see now why Kai kept you close."
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My chest was heaving, my breath ragged. Legs rooted to the floor like iron pillars. The green Spectra I'd carried for six months had twisted—deepened—shifted into something entirely else.
Violet.
It didn't hum—it howled. Not pain. Pressure. Not strain. But raw, untamed power. Every inch of me vibrated like my body was tuned too tight, one wrong move away from snapping. My veins buzzed. My skin thrummed. This wasn't borrowed power. It was mine. Unleashed. Untamed. A terrifying, exhilarating truth.
Vance's eyes narrowed behind his tinted lenses, his attention fully, dangerously, on me now.
"So you're part of that five percent after all…"
Five percent? The thought flickered and died. It didn't matter. They moved. I didn't hesitate. I ran straight at them.
The moment they split to flank me—two wide, one straight—I slid forward, low, scooping a handful of broken concrete dust and flinging it up to scatter their vision. Dirty, but effective.
The one in front flinched—I slammed an elbow into his ribs. Felt something crack. He staggered, doubling over with a gasp.
Another closed from the left. Fast. MOVE. I ducked, stepped inside, pivoted—put my whole weight behind a right hook. It landed clean. He flew, colliding with a stack of crates with a splintering crack of wood.
A blur—fist—came from the right. I instinctively raised my forearm— And then, it wasn't just my arm. A shimmering pulse of violet energy surged from my skin, solidifying around my limb an instant before impact. The punch hit the barrier of raw Spectra. A low, grinding hum ripped through the air, absorbing the force before violently rebounding it outward. The attacker roared, stumbling backward, his arm likely numb from the shock.
I didn't give him time to breathe. My foot lashed out, sweeping his legs, bringing him down hard. I drove my heel into his chest before he could recover.
But even as I did, the first two were already pushing themselves up. They all came again. All three. No breaks. No patterns. I barely had time to think, my body moving on pure, desperate instinct. My muscles screamed—
And then… My arms burned. Not pain. Not fatigue. Pressure. Energy building beneath the skin. Palms hot. Fingertips buzzing. Something wanted out. I obeyed.
Fist to the ground. And the world answered. BOOM. The floor cracked like thunder. A shockwave exploded out from my knuckles—violet and violent—ripping across the warehouse in all directions. The concrete fractured, air warped, dust flared. The elites flew—bodies flung like dolls, slammed against steel and stone.
Shock Pulse.
I stood in the crater I made. Chest rising. Hand trembling. Energy thrumming through every cell. My only focus was the lingering threat, the need to protect, the raw power surging through every fiber of my being.
Across the room, Kai groaned—barely awake. A tremor from the shockwave rippled through his already battered body, forcing a choked gasp. He turned toward me. He saw what I'd become—standing over the wreckage. Alone. Awake. Changed. An impossible, terrifying force he'd seen glimpses of but never this unleashed.
Beside him, Kaito stirred with a raw cough, spitting out dust. The passing shockwave made him convulse, a fresh wave of pain briefly clouding his vision. His head lifted with effort, his usually impish eyes, dull with pain, widening to twin saucers of pure, stunned disbelief as they fixed on me. He stared at the crater, at the impossible violet aura, then back to my face, jaw slack. A weak, strangled laugh, more a wheeze than a chuckle, escaped him. He tried to push himself higher, only to fall back with a grunt, still staring.
And then, a silent gasp, a sharp intake of breath. Emi, still slumped against the wall, her own Green Spectra exhausted, felt the ground vibrate beneath her. Her amber eyes, usually so composed, were fixed on me, reflecting the violet glow of the crater. It wasn't mere shock. It was a dawning comprehension, a recognition of something she'd always sensed in me—that instinct, that brilliance, now manifested as something both awe-inspiring and utterly formidable.
And Vance? He was still watching. Still composed. But the smirk was gone. His eyes, unreadable before, now held a glint of absolute certainty, and perhaps, a flicker of something akin to predatory interest.
That flicker hardened. Not into malice, but into a cold, decisive intent. Akira was an anomaly, a "Five Percent," an unforeseen variable in a perfectly executed plan. A liability. Liabilities were eliminated.
My own senses screamed. The Violet Spectra, raw and untamed, howled a warning. Vance wasn't just watching anymore. He was coming. And this time, it was to kill.
He moved first. Not a charge, but a dissolution. One moment, he was there, a silhouette against the swirling dust. The next, he was gone, a ripple in the air where he'd stood. He reappeared instantly, a phantom-quick strike aimed at my temple.
I threw up an arm, a surge of violet energy hardening around it, absorbing the blow with a thunderous crack. But he wasn't just one. Another Vance shimmered into existence to my left, an afterimage of his first teleport, already winding up a kick. And then another to my right, a mere illusion, but indistinguishable from reality.
I twisted, trying to guard, but it was like fighting smoke. He was everywhere and nowhere, a constant, flickering presence. His short-range teleportation was seamless, faster than thought, weaving through the space around me. His short-range illusions were layered, convincing, making every feint feel like a true attack, forcing my untamed Violet to flare wildly, burning through my reserves reacting to phantoms.
A searing punch landed in my gut, forcing a gasp. Then a kick to the knee, buckling me. Another illusion burst into being behind me, pulling my focus, while the real Vance appeared in front, a brutal uppercut snapping my head back. Each blow was precise, designed to incapacitate, to dismantle. I was a storm, but he was a surgeon, cutting away at my fury. My Violet aura flickered, straining to keep up with the overwhelming assault, rapidly draining me.
I can't hit him. The thought burned, desperate and raw. He's a ghost. Every ounce of my power was reacting, but I was fighting nothing. I felt my body screaming, energy hemorrhaging, but the desperate need to protect—to stand—kept me moving. My vision swam, but I fought on, a primal roar tearing from my throat.
Then, something shifted. A flicker. Not in his illusion, but in the air itself, a microscopic distortion that my raw, overcharged Violet senses could just barely detect. An intuition, sharper than logic, pierced through the chaos. Vance wasn't everywhere. He was just going everywhere.
I stopped trying to hit him. I hit the space.
With a desperate surge, I slammed my fist into the ground, not for a direct Shock Pulse, but a localized, violent eruption of Violet energy that tore through the concrete in a ten-foot radius. The ground fractured, dust exploded, and the air warped. The illusions shimmered, then dissolved like mist. For the briefest moment, the space was clear.
Vance, forced to truly evade rather than just deceive, blurred backward. He appeared further out, a flicker of something akin to surprise crossing his composed face. He was no longer untouchable.
I charged, a roaring, untamed engine of Violet destruction. My movements were less refined than his, but infinitely more forceful. I wasn't just throwing punches; I was throwing localized explosions of Spectra. He dodged, teleported, created more illusions, but my attacks now covered wider areas, forcing him to expend more energy to truly escape. A sweeping Violet-charged kick connected with his arm as he tried to evade, sending a jolt up my leg and forcing a grunt of pain from him.
"You learn fast," Vance said, his voice flat, analytical, devoid of his earlier 'amusement.' "A fascinating adaptation." He parried another explosive punch, his arm momentarily shimmering with Violet energy to deflect the force. I was pushing him, making him work. I pressed the advantage, a flurry of powerful, instinctual strikes, trying to corner him, to make his illusions break down under the sheer volume of my attacks. My aura flared, seemingly brighter, more stable.
But Vance was not just strong; he was a master. My desperate, untamed surge was powerful, but it wasn't sustainable. As I pressed, he began to exploit my energy drain, the micro-pauses in my wild attacks. He adapted faster.
His illusions became more intricate, more layered, appearing not just in space, but folding in on themselves, making it impossible to predict his next teleportation. He was like a ghost slipping through cracks that didn't exist. He started landing blows again, not just jabs, but precise, debilitating strikes to nerve clusters and pressure points. My body screamed, my muscles locked, and the Violet aura around me began to flicker violently, threatening to extinguish completely. I was being systematically dismantled.
I fought on pure will, fueled by the primal instinct to protect Kaito and Emi. Every breath was a burning effort. My vision tunneled. Vance closed in, a killing blow forming.
The battle had raged for a long, brutal while. The warehouse was an absolute ruin, concrete blasted to powder, steel girders twisted like ribbon. Vance, poised for the kill, paused. His cold eyes flickered, not to me, but past me.
Across the room, Kai groaned, pushing himself higher against a support beam, his eyes grimly fixed on the impossible battle. Beside him, Kaito was on hands and knees, spitting blood, his head slowly rising, eyes wide with a pain that mingled with a fierce, protective hatred. He stared at the vanishing enemy, his jaw clenched, every fiber of his being radiating a desperate promise of future retribution. And Emi, bruised and battered, was laboriously pushing herself up against a shattered crate, her gaze unwavering. Her amber eyes, usually so composed, now burned with a quiet, terrifying intensity as they fixed on the empty space where Vance had been, a deep, silent loathing for the man who had driven me to this breaking point. They were hurt, barely conscious, but they were stirring. They were witnesses. They were a complication. Vance's decision was instantaneous. A liability was one thing; a multitude of resurfacing, high-level Spectra users, even injured ones, was an unacceptable risk to his immediate retreat. His objective shifted: eliminate the primary threat later, secure escape now.
He delivered one last, devastating, concentrated Violet strike aimed directly at my chest, a blow meant to shatter my core. At the exact same instant, he unleashed a massive, blinding illusion that encompassed the entire warehouse, making the very air shimmer and distort. Then, he simply vanished. No sound, no trace. His elites were abandoned; they were expendable.
I took the full brunt of Vance's final assault. My Violet aura flared one last, desperate, protective burst, absorbing the worst of it. But the energy vanished, leaving me hollow, my body screaming, my legs barely holding me upright. I stood, trembling violently, bathed in sweat and blood, near collapse. Through the clearing dust, I finally, truly, saw them. Kaito, Emi, Kai. Stirring. Alive. And I had kept them that way.
The dust was finally beginning to settle.
I stood alone at the heart of the wreckage—body trembling, limbs leaden, breath ragged. The crater beneath my feet cracked outward like a spiderweb. The warehouse was unrecognizable: metal beams twisted, walls caved in, the ground fractured in jagged veins of destruction.
But I wasn't seeing any of it.
I just… stood there.
Motionless.
Eyes locked on the spot where Vance had vanished.
My arms hung limply at my sides, fingers twitching with residual sparks of Violet energy. My legs ached to collapse, but I stayed upright—frozen. My chest rose and fell, but everything felt distant. Muted. Like the fight hadn't ended, only faded behind the veil of something… heavier.
"Akira?"A voice—faint, cautious. Kaito?
"Akira!"Louder now. Closer. Kai?
I didn't move. Didn't answer. I was still in it. Somewhere deeper. Somewhere darker.
Then—
"Akira!!"
That voice.
Sharp. Fierce. Emi.
My name hit like a lash of lightning.
I gasped—a sharp inhale that broke the fog. My pupils contracted. The haze peeled away. The scent of scorched concrete returned. The ache in my limbs flared back into clarity.
I blinked.
Turned—barely.
Kaito. Kai. Emi. Alive.
"…Emi… Kaito…"
Their names barely left my throat before my knees buckled.
The ground rushed up.
"AKIRA!!"
A scream—one of them, or all of them—I couldn't tell.
And then:
Black.