A few minutes before Kenji rose.
Kenji was slipping away. He lay broken atop the crates, the warmth bleeding out of him and into the wood. Every breath was an agony of internal jagged edges; his own shattered bones were stabbing him from within. His vision was a fading grey smear.
I-I'm dying.
The cold was absolute. A memory flickered—the first time he had ever killed a Beast. A white wolf, gut-shot and gurgling, staring at Kenji as the life drained from its eyes. It had only been trying to protect its young.
Am I like that wolf now? he wondered bitterly. Dammit, am I really going to die like this? Shouldn't I at least take these bastards with me?
"Let me help you," a foreign voice whispered.
Kenji's orange eyes rolled upward, searching the dark. He saw it then—a deep red orb, and pulsing within its center, a Black Star.
"Will you help me kill them?" Kenji asked, his soul screaming with a final, desperate surge of wrath.
"We will slaughter them all," the voice promised.
Kenji's breath hitched, turning shallow and thready.
"Child, do not agree!" A new voice, feminine and frantic, pierced the darkness of his mind
.Who? Who are you? Kenji's thoughts were sluggish. The new voice was agitated, desperate. He didn't like it. It felt like a restraint. The first voice—the dark one—resonated with the fire in his blood. It shared his rage.
"Child, that being is ancient evil!" the woman cried.
Evil?
The word echoed. He heard the ghosts of his village, their whispers like dry leaves: Crimson hair... a bad omen. His mother was a monster. A cursed child.
Hey, Evil, Kenji thought, a mental sneer forming. Let's do it.
"CHILD, DON'T!"
The red orb shattered. A viscous, crimson liquid erupted from the Black Star, surging into Kenji's mouth and down his throat. The orb vanished, replaced by a scorching heat that blossomed in his chest and roared outward.
"FOOLISH CHILD! THAT BEING WILL CONSUME YOU FROM WITHIN!"
"It doesn't matter," Kenji's body replied, though his mind was no longer entirely his own. "I will kill them."
His internal temperature skyrocketed. His bones began to knit together—a silent, agonizing process of grinding calcium and snapping tendons. He coughed, a weak sound like gravel scraping his lungs.
"We will rage. We will slaughter. We will end them," the Black Star hissed. Kenji felt something like worms burrowing through his marrow. "Buy me time."
"I will go to the one of golden blood," the feminine voice whispered, fading in defeat as she retreated toward Takahiro.
The Present
The three men stood their ground, their faces grim. "Let's take this kid seriously," Yellow Maw growled.
Simultaneously, they pulled glass vials of crimson liquid from their belts and downed them in a single gulp. A surge of artificial Hashi flared around them.
The Cowboy drew his second revolver, his hands a blur. He triggered "Blink" repeatedly, flickering through the air to avoid the devastating fists Kenji aimed at his head. Kenji ignored the bullets, his gaze locked on the Cowboy with a predatory mask of hate.
A wind spear from the butler struck Kenji's side, tearing a chunk of flesh away. Kenji didn't even flinch; he simply pivoted and blasted toward the caster.
Nothing is working, the butler thought, sweat stinging his eyes. Enchanted lead, wind spears... he's walking through it all.
Yellow Maw hurled his heavy axe like a boomerang, the massive blade whistling past the butler to intercept Kenji's incoming kick.
KABOOM!
The impact was so violent the axe's head shattered into iron shards. Kenji stared at the broken weapon for a heartbeat, looking like a predator that had just lost its prey. Then, he turned his sights on Yellow Maw.
"Martial King Technique: Closing Step!" Yellow Maw muttered.
He vanished, reappearing inches from Kenji's face. His fists were already a blur. "Martial King Technique: Four-Armed Fury!"
Yellow Maw's hands became a whirlwind. Left hook, right hook, uppercut, straight, straight, straight, left hook.
The air crackled with the speed of the assault. For twenty solid seconds, Yellow Maw rained down twenty devastating blows. Kenji didn't move to block. He took every single hit, his head snapping back and forth like a punching bag.
Yellow Maw triggered Blink, clearing twenty feet of distance in a blink to catch his breath.
Kenji's face was a ruin. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the skin on his cheeks had been peeled away by the friction of the strikes. The butler seized the moment.
"Arcane Art: Wind Cannon!"
A spiral of compressed air punched through Kenji's abdomen, leaving a gaping, translucent hole. The men watched, horrified, as a grotesque display of regeneration began. Kenji's skin began to steam and bubble. The flesh audibly hissed as it boiled, closing the wound in seconds.
The air around the boy began to shimmer with a violent, distorted heat.
"AHHHHHHH!!!" Kenji roared again, the sound vibrating in their very teeth.
"How much more power is in this brat?!" Yellow Maw shouted, feeling the boy's Hashi spike to impossible levels.
Kenji launched himself at Yellow Maw. They collided in a brutal brawl of raw fists against pale, armored arms. Every time Kenji's knuckles hit Yellow Maw, they left blackened, scorched marks on the pirate's skin.