The lights cast a dim glow, and the shadows on the wall reached like bony fingers, clawing at the boundaries of reality itself. The very atmosphere was thick with the smell of metallic fear, and the camera's unblinking gaze recorded every shake, every gasp, as if the world itself was holding its breath. The mayor, a man fat with the false armor of power, sat stiff as aboard in his chair, a mask of deliberate certainty on his face—until Akira appeared, stripping away the mask of anonymity.
When Akira's face appeared, it was as if the mayor saw the abyss in the eyes that reflected back to him. The mayor's eyes widened in terror, pupils expanding as black holes consuming the light, as sweat trickled across his forehead, tracing lines of moisture on the clammy surface of his pale skin, while the palms of his hands clinched the armrests with a fierce grip that whitened the knuckles. It was as if the nightmare in the mayor's past had come to life with the appearance of this one man, one of the reanimated specters of the mayor's forgotten transgressions exhumed from the grave, inscribed with the scratches of pain and betrayal on the surface of forgotten remorse. The lines of Akira's face are razor-sharp with an undeniable aggression, a focal point of bold angles where the dark shadows of undischarged rage narrowed the eyes, with the burning ignition of a thousand silenced injustices in their cavern
His eyes locked onto the camera, he moved towards it with the deliberation of a predator, every step ringing out across the smooth floor of the room like the tolling of the funeral bell. Zooming in on the image, the camera centered his focus, drawing his anger into the homes of the watchers, inflicting upon them the weight of his stare through the screen. "This mayor and his fellows," Akira continued, his deep voice the warning note of someone who had looked into the abyss of humanity's darkness, "Subjected my mother to tortures that cannot be put into words, tortures that took her dignity, her life. No, they did not give her a merciful death, they gave it to her in the hard logic of unchecked power." His monologue trailed off into the darkness, full of shadows of back alleys and late-night conspiracies, where the powerful fed on the blood of the weak.
Leaning in closer to the camera lens, his breath clouding the lens ever so slightly, his eyes narrowing as he willed the live feed to transform into a confessional statement against society itself. "These are the men who shape your world—the mayors you applaud and the criminals you empower through your indifference and your vote. And in the grand play of life itself, you have bestowed upon villains the stage itself, and the curtains are opening on the reckoning."
In one smooth motion, he stepped backward, and the crimson mask began to slide across his face like a shroud of bloody destiny. It obscured his face, yet made him more evident, transforming him into an icon, a paradigm of revenge resurrected. Spreading his arms wide as though encompassing the chaos that swirled through the universe, his figure against the backdrop of the studio seemed to call forth the ancient gods of wrathful judgment. In a voice that boomed through the speakers, he declared indignatorially:
"I AM JUSTICE!"
It echoed, very effectively, shattering the very fabric of broadcasting. Then, with a speed that muddled philosophy and rage, Akira withdrew his gun from his belt—a streamlined, unyielding instrument of destiny. There were three shots, each a punctuation mark in the mayor's sentence: first, a resounding crack of thunder, then a deliberate echo of what was to be, and third, sealing the sentence with finality. All three bullets hit their target, two of them smashing into his forehead like two black roses exploding among milky petals, causing him to pitch forward with a grotesque imitation of a surrendering man.
The camera quivered wildly, jerking in the grip of a registration deserting the cameraman, whose hands were shaking with a dread at what was happening, feeding back into the watching households through their television screens a level of raw, makeshift madness epitomized by screams, wrenching shrieks, rending out of sight, a seamlessly constant tumult of terror so anarchic it was entering countless.
Undeterred, Akira eased his body down upon the sofa with all the grace of a king contemplating his kingdom. He rested a booted foot on the body of the mayor, now a gruesome footstool, his blood oozing across the flooring in thick, glistening patterns that echoed the cracks in the fractured soul of society. His voice grew deeper, taking on the resonant timbre of deep introspection, a cinematic profundity of pause and delivery, as if he spoke not only to his audience, but to the primal struggle of good against evil, etched immortally across the tapestry of existence.
"Tell me something," he said, his words hanging in mid-air, drifting through time like wisps of smoke, inviting the world to consider the darkness. "Can you really defeat evil simply by entrusting it to those in power, by praying fervently to the stars of bureaucracy, praying they can purify the darkness?" He paused, a great cinematic hold, time itself expanding in his wait, allowing his words to take root in the minds of his audience. "Of course not—because then, of course, evil would have already vanished, lost in the mists of time, leaving in its place a land of utopia."
Standing from the couch as if the storm was building momentum within him, Akira raised his voice to a thundering crescendo, unstoppable and all-consuming. "And so, in the dark passages of my belief system, there is but one irreversible course to repair this torn-apart world." Drawing the sword in one fluid motion, the metal shining brightly under the lights as if beckoning a storm of destruction, he pointed the sword straight into the lens of the camera as if transfixing the complacency of the viewer.
"I will perpetrate evil—to defeat the evil that poisons the world that surrounds us," he bellowed.
But with those words, he was gone— melts away into the night like the apparition that he is, leaving behind only the lingering memory of the sword and the stunned moment of the broadcast.
In the isolation of my darkened office, the full weight of it all came crashing down on me like a tsunami of regret and determination. I slammed my fist on the desk, and a small splinter of wood crackled from the impact. "Akira, my dear friend," I murmured into the empty room, my voice heavy with that awful, gnawing pain of a man torn asunder by conflicting loyalties and responsibilities, "you are correct in your assessment of this foul planet. But the road you are following. it will soak the very ground in rivers of blood, grease to the gears of revenge until nothing but a sea of rubies is left."
My hand shook as I fished the phone from the drawer, the screen lighting up my face with an eerie blue glow. I called the CEO of OSAKA NEWS, the ringtone cutting through the tension like a hot knife through butter. He picked up on the third ring, his voice cautious, tinged with skepticism: "Hello?"
"This is an emergency," I growled, my voice bitter and unyielding, heavy with the intense drama of a warrior issuing a challenge out of the night. "Patch this call through on your station. Now." The CEO gulped, his answer shaking in awe and terror: "G-God, how are you alive, L-Lint?" I bellowed into the receiver, my voice echoing off the walls, "Do as I command! Put the call live NOW!" Seconds later, the radio burst back to life with the buzzing of a real broadcasting, my own voice now radiating throughout the broadcasts, reaching deep into the souls of the city. In a voice low and defiant, philosophical in the undertone of inexorable opposition, I declared:
"This is Lint Saito... I am alive. And to Akira and Vernon, wherever you may squat in the maze of this world, I will find—and hunt down. With all the strength at my disposal, to the fullest extent of my determination. Let us begin this massive game of three, where every step is laced with the essence of destiny, and the board awash with the price of our souls."