145. Emancipators
Okita Soji whistled as he walked down the white-walled hallway
that led out of the Shieikan cafeteria, casually searching his mind to see if he
could catch a familiar aura. As usual, he came up blank in his search for
Hijikata and Yamazaki –they were both keeping their auras on eternal mute, as
if they wanted people to forget about them.
That wasn't enough to damper his sunshine, though. Okita still had
a juicy secret to keep all to himself – the foreigners who'd suddenly appeared
out of nowhere, and the especially powerful-looking young man with the spiky
black hair and monochrome eyes. He wasn't nearly as good-looking or sexy as
Toshi, but he certainly would be a nice change of pace, and Okita couldn't wait
to match blades with him in battle.
The more he thought about it, in fact, the more Okita found
himself gripped by a desire to fight the young man, right here, right now. Checking
in to see if their foreigners had all woken up from their regeneration tanks
certainly did seem to be a more exciting option than going to visit Toshi, especially
the way the man had been as of late. It infuriated Okita to no end to see his
superior so effortlessly charmed by the 'empress'. No matter how beautiful she
may have been, it was clear that she was arrogant and stuck up, despite being
completely out of her depth. He knew there was no way she would survive in the
capital, for long, however, and so he was content to watch Toshi play out his
little fantasy, if only for the inevitable grisly climax.
Okita was suddenly pulled from his devious reverie as he sensed a
black, inky aura seep out behind his back. He spun around to see Yamazaki drop
down from a shadow in the ceiling. The spy's long black hair was wavy and disheveled,
as if he'd just taken a shower, and he glanced along the hallway suspiciously
before drawing near Okita.
"Hey, I was just looking for you," Okita grinned.
"Why didn't you come to breakfast?"
"You're alone, yes?" Yamazaki murmured. "Did you
know some foreigners have made camp in our infirmary?"
"Well, geez!" Okita laughed and put his hands on his
hips. "There's no fooling you, is there? How did you find them?"
"You knew about them?" Yamazaki asked quickly, scanning
Okita's eyes. "I happened to be surveying that floor earlier, and noticed
one flexing her aura, so I took a peek. They seem powerful."
"Yes, they do, which is why I called dibs on them
first!" Okita raised his voice. "The pale boy with the black hair, that
is. I don't care about the rest of them."
"I didn't see anyone like that there," Yamazaki shook
his head and glanced down to both ends of the hallway. "But it doesn't
matter. I don't want to fight them – I want to use them. For the benefit of the
squad."
This made Okita grimace, and he suddenly realized why Yamazaki had
been acting so shady. "Ugh. Go on..."
"You should want the same thing as I," Yamazaki moved in closer, and
his voice became a whisper. "Our vice-commander has been afflicted with a
disease – it's our duty to cure it for him. I know that presence of the empress
irritates you as well."
"Well, yes," Okita smirked. "But revenge is best
served cold, wouldn't you agree?"
"Our vice-commander has had his fun," Yamazaki replied
coldly. "He's entitled to that. But is enough is enough. He must wake up,
and rise to become the leader he's always been meant to be."
Okita looked deep in the eyes of the short, compact man, trying to
discern if there was any duplicity about what Yamazaki was saying. While Okita
admired Toshi a great deal, the reverence that the spy displayed for the man
felt completely alien to him – it was as if Yamazaki viewed the man as something
more than a moral, or some infallible symbol of something greater. To Yamazaki,
Toshi was something that seemingly had to be protected at any cost.
As creepy as it was, however, Okita couldn't deny that it was
terribly amusing.
"Alright then," he said, as he leaned up against the
wall. "What do you want me to do?"
"Was Kondo at breakfast?" Yamazaki rasped.
"Yeah, although he was late," Okita chuckled.
"Why?"
"Go and alert him that the foreigners are here," Yamazaki commanded.
"Meanwhile, I'll go and alert our vice-commander."
"What?!" Okita shouted, then quickly covered up his
mouth sheepishly. "Why? I'm not giving up the fight I was promised, not
even to the commander!"
"Then go with him," Yamazaki replied effortlessly.
"I doubt even he could handle them all at once, with the way he's been
treating his body lately."
Okita furrowed his brow and took a step back. "Wait...wait a minute,
Yamazaki, what are you planning?"
"I told you..." Yamazaki replied, as he sank back into the shadows.
"It's time for Hijikata Toshizo to wake up to the true threats that
surround us."
Okita felt panic
*************
filled the marketplace as the townspeople continued to watch Ito
slice out at Vance from his camouflage. Even Samon, the merchant who Vance had
just befriended, was long gone. The Albavitrean kept his guard up and slowly stepped
backwards, ever wary for another invisible strike to come out of nowhere. The
triangular palanquin that housed the shogun remained motionless, void of its
couriers.
Vance searched his mind for any trace of his foe, but found nothing.
He didn't just make his body invisible – somehow, he's made it impossible to
see his entire aura as well, which means there's no way for me to predict where
he'll strike next.
"You think you're above our rules?" Ito's voice floated
out from nowhere. "That you're better than us?! More advanced than us?! More
evolved than us?!"
"No," Vance grunted. "I was just minding my own
business."
"Make all the excuses you want!" Ito laughed. "The
truth remains – you are the inferior ones now, and you foreigners will all
bow before us!"
Vance watched as blood continued to drip down from the slice in
his ear. A tiny puddle had formed on the ground, and as he stared into it, he
saw an outer corner of the puddle shrink, as if it had been eaten away by some
invisible force.
It's anything he touches, Vance
realized at last, then thrust his psynergized fists out desperately.
Vance felt something sharp meet his hands – no doubt a katana swung
down by his supremacist foe. A powerful, pointed force slammed into his fist, but
Vance could still sense no psynergy. Wrapping purple fingers around the invisible
blade, he shifted the rest of his aura into his legs and shoulders.
"Who are you?" a cold voice called from nowhere.
"You'll find out eventually," Vance muttered. "Just
know this – I bow to no one."
The Albavitrean blitzed forward, spearing his shoulder out in case
Ito insisted on blocking his way. He clipped the samurai on the side, then continued
to sprint down a side street.
Ito scoffed. "You think–"
"Ito!" Koga called from the palanquin. "Are you done
now? If we aren't in the tea house in the next ten minutes, I'm going to have you
for breakfast!"
"Yes...sir..." Ito spoke reluctantly, then phased back
into visibility.
"Shinsengumi!" Ito shouted. "Hunt that man down and
kill him! I want his head on a pole before we return!"
One block south from the marketplace, Vance charged through twelve
armored yokai with his aura alone. He saw flashes of blue-and-white robed men run
toward him, but his a surge of his aura was enough to knock them back Making sure
not to stray from the road that Samon had pointed out earlier, Vance kept his
eyes on the horizon and kept moving westward. Finally, once he'd freed himself
from the cramped city streets and got a clear view of the horizon, he focused and
created a void in front of himself, linked to the farthest point away that he
could both see and sense with his mind. In the blink of an eye, Vance could
travel miles, and landed on a wide dirt road that continued out past the city limits.
Farming fields spread out on all sides along the dirt road, and as he continued
rift-hopping ahead, Vance soon spotted rocky, barren land that overlooked the
cliffs of a coast.
Farther down on the horizon sat the Neo-Edo port, which was adjoined
to what looked like a large factory at the edge of the water. Hovercrafts with covered
truck beds floated through the sky transporting unknown goods, while smoke billed
up from rows of blinking towers. The entrance to the facility looked like a sprawling
runway lined with towering black turrets, while two larger turrets at the far
end equipped with needle-shaped laser cannons guarded a chained shutter that
served as the front entrance.
Vance calmly approached the gate. Patrolling the entrance yard
were monsters who looked similar to the ogres he had seen at the palace, except
bulkier, with grotesque one-eyed faces.
Vance saw the nozzles of the cannons swerve toward him and heard a
voice. "What is your business here, foreigner?"
"I am the son of Grayson Lee," Vance said boldly, "and
I've come to inspect the progress of Greymatter production."
A long silence followed. "There is no scheduled appointment for
you, sir."
"How can I assess an accurate report if you know I'm coming beforehand?"
Vance countered. "Now open up and show me to the main in charge."
After another short pause, the heavy shutter gate led out mechanical
groan and rose upwards.
Without delay, Vance's eyes were assaulted by an orgy of machinery.
Framed by soaring domal ceilings and circuit-tattooed walls was an amalgamation
of hardware and conveyor rivers that made him feel nauseous just from staring at
them.
Grayson designed this? Or was it Takeda? Not like it matters now. This
is how he plans to enslave Earth. It all has to go.
A robot that looked like a dog's torso to a floating metal ball covered
in spikes glided toward Vance. "Please present some form of identi–"
Vance's fist exploded through the yokai's face, painting the grated
floor black. The metal ball whirled and prepared to counterattack, but was
vaporized by what came next.
For the first time since his training, Vance let his aura roar free.
His genetic powers swirled and surged through his body, igniting every synapse and
producing a catastrophic shockwave of power.
Psynergy ravaged the technology that lined the chambers within, and
the sound of a thousand pieces of machinery shattering in unison filled the destroyer's
ears. Vance's own power flooded his eyes, and a siren rang through the complex.
Homing missiles and explosive rockets were fired toward the designated intruder,
only to be swallowed up by the expanding purple abyss.
Vance poured metapsynergy out from his body in a 360-degree arc,
screaming along with the rhapsodic feeling of destroying all of Grayson's hard
work. With no one to worry about but himself, the 18-year old reveled in the ruination,
pounding through thick walls, computer mainframes, and storehouses full of completed
Greymatters.
As the vicinity smoldered, Vance walked forward, dragging with himself
an orb of violet death. Flying cats with robotic wings and armored bulls with platinum
crab legs were among the mishmashed cyborg beasts that came to stop Vance, but
they too were swallowed up into the purple cyclone of death. Nothing made a dent
in Vance's psychic shield as he continued forward, spiraling up a tornado of debris
in his wake. Crashes, booms, and crackles accompanied the maddening electric funeral,
and it sounded wonderful to him.
The factory
*************
had only been constructed after years of hard work and a staggering
amount of foreign aid, and now it was being leveled in a matter of minutes. Even
people as far out as the fields could feel the the horrifying violet aura intensify,
growing ever stronger, but there was no dweller of Yamato who experienced more
terror than Takeda Kanryusai himself.
At first, the 5th Captain of the Shinsengumi could hardly
believe his senses, but once he stepped out from the southern wing of the factory
and witnessed the genocide with his own eyes, his path was clear. After standing
paralyzed in shock for a moment, he snatched up his katana, fixed his round spectacles
on his flat face, and dashed down the rickety metal staircase that led to the assembly
lines below. While the Takeda Factory's main product was the Greymatter, it was
also a key player in Yamato's technological revolution. If it was destroyed, all
the splendor of the shogun's new regime would come to a jarring stop.
Once he reached the ground floor, Takeda was finally able to see
what was happening to the realm he ruled. At the other end, Vance rampaged
through pieces of expensive equipment, ripping through chunk after chunk with a
torrent of purple psynergy.
Takeda glanced at his wristband and paled. "An S-Class, here?
But how?!" Desperately, he slid his hand into his robes and pressed a
hidden button. "SROAD! I need you!"
Five multicolored streaks jettisoned down from the sky, piercing through
Vance's monstrous aura and momentarily dispersing it. In response, Vance created
a dense layer of metapsynergy around his body and gazed ahead at the newcomers.
Five uniformed figures stood across the vantage of destruction, each
armed and overflowing with a rainbow of energy.
"Aureolin Yellow!" shouted the leftmost one, a stout humanoid
in a yellow, full-body latex suit brandishing a long pole with dual sai blades.
"Shocking Pink!" A husky feminine voice came from the
rightmost one, a slender being in a similar suit holding glittering shurikens
in each hand.
"Cerulean Blue!" cried out the second from the left, who
posed with an intricately-designed bow.
"Myrtle Green!" a muscular humanoid equipped with spiked
fists blared, as he stepped into place with one fist out and the other at his side.
"Vermilion Red!" The final member in the center screeched
extravagantly, then stomped both feet into the charred metal. Attached to his back
was a golden sword.
"Serving with honor!" Aureolin Yellow boomed.
"Fighting for justice and truth!" Shocking Pink put a white
gloved hand on her cheek and jutted her hips out.
"Never looking back!" Cerulean Blue swung his bow around
in his hands and pointed his right arm straight toward Vance.
"Vanquishing evil and protecting the weak!" Myrtle Green
flatted his palms into karate chops and raised his hands.
"We fear no one, for the power of teamwork is on our side!"
Vermilion Red bent his right arm and placed it diagonally over his chest, then
stretched out his left upward in the same direction.
"We are SROAD!" The superheroes joined their voices
together for one final battle cry. "Super Rangers of Absolute Destruction!"
