Chapter Six

In the depth of space floated a white-hot sphere of pure heat. All flame and heat in some way radiated from it. Life could not exist without warmth, and the Spirit of Fire provided.

The planet Hades orbited the Spirit of Fire at three astronomical units. Even at this distance, its surface bubbled in places, with cracked mountains spewing lava. Its air would fry a frozen chicken in less than ten minutes. Yet, even in such an unforgiving place, the life-giving power of the Spirit that glowed brighter than any sun provided hope for its inhabitants. Its tufts of flame touched the souls of a race of people that lived in the unearthly heat. The Hadeans possessed bodies dark as night with thin, reddish magma lines tracing up their bodies. Their blood-red hair and red eyes had evolved to survive the temperature.

They survived and thrived, building a complex society despite the unforgiving environment. The men and women of Hades endured thanks to the Spirit. Haruki saw all of this in a body-less vision. He had no form and could not feel or smell.

As the people went about their lives, he traveled about them by will alone, with no legs to carry him. Families did their chores, played games, and did their work just as any human on Earth would. Despite their charcoal appearance, outlined in glowing lines, they looked very human.

He heard a familiar call.

“Korazon!” a woman cried.

He willed himself over to her. The woman stood tall and had long hair. At her feet, played a boy no older than eight. Somehow, as he pulled himself unseen towards the boy, he felt a connection. The facial features were so similar.

How is this possible? he thought. He studied the creases and lines. Despite the small child’s dark skin, red hair and eyes, this kid looked like him. I was born human! This is insane!

Off in the distance, lightning crackled in the sky.

Haruki willed himself closer. The reddish atmosphere clouded over with dark clouds of blue lightning. A great bolt of lightning split the sky and struck the ground. The gentle bubbling of pools and running lava were outshouted by the blast, louder than the boom of a cannon. In its wake, stood a man. Standing seven feet tall and garbed in a toga decorated in regal designs and jewelry, the curly-haired man regarded his surroundings. His hair and beard, the color of stained oak, wafted in the breeze.

The Hadeans gathered to stare at the light-skinned man. A desperate foreboding iced over Haruki.

The man sneered, then extended two fingers forward. A bolt of lightning shot from his hand and exploded a Hadean into fragments.

Haruki tried to attack, but with no hands or feet, his willpower accomplished nothing. He screamed mentally as he watched innocent people die as the man trudged forward. With every step, a murder occurred.

“Run away, Korazon!” the mother screamed.

No! Haruki thought.

In the mad scramble to escape, she’d been knocked down. The man knelt on her back and stared at the boy, who trembled where he stood, frozen by fear. Haruki thrashed mentally but could do nothing. I won’t watch this!

The scene skipped forward. The man apparently accomplished his brutal goal. The woman lay dead at the boy’s feet. Haruki saw the man turn into lightning and disappear into the sky. The boy trembled as tears streamed from his eyes and turned to vapor on his cheek. His small hands shook the woman, but she would not stir. Haruki felt his heart break watching the boy cry over his dead mother. With no eyes to cry or hands to shake, he felt pure sorrow and anger.

The scene skipped forward again. The boy dashed from the scene to a temple normally reserved for worshippers. There, he invoked a forbidden ritual and vanished from Hades. Haruki followed as he stood in the blackness of space. Korazon trudged up stairs surrounded by pinpricks of light from distant stars. Despite his Hadean physiology, the unrivaled heat from the Spirit of Fire began to char his body. Haruki watched and tried to will the boy to turn back. The boy’s hair burned away, followed by the tips of his fingers. Finally, too close to open his eyes, he stood, the glowing orb many times his size a wall before him.

A single tuft of flame touched the boy. The Spirit of Fire spoke to the boy, mind to mind. It demanded without words why he bothered it. Korazon felt power beyond power itself with every thought sent his way.

He had but one word in his mind as reply. “Revenge!”

Haruki felt the infinite emotion of the Spirit as it weighed the events that transpired. The boy’s impetuousness and impulsive request did not sit well with it. At the same time, it recognized the pure evil of the act committed. Ultimately, Korazon had been the first to make a formal demand of it in ages, and it accepted the boy’s bravery. A bright light engulfed him.

“Who are you, boy?” a booming voice called.

Haruki got teleported with the boy to a grandiose Greek-looking temple. The boy seemed dazed but for a moment.

Then he looked at the source of the voice and his face screwed up into a glare of pure rage.

“You!”

These beings resembled the Greek gods, Haruki saw, and he recognized a Zeus-like figure seated at the front. The others regarded the sudden appearance of this snarling boy as an amusement, like an annoying fly that flew in through an open window. The bearded god gave a chuckle of amusement. “What business have you with me, boy?” he beckoned.

A haughty woman in a regal dress and crown turned her head to her husband. “Lord Zenus, this child seems upset with you. I’ve never seen him before.”

Zenus shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before either.”

“This monster…!” Korazon’s words caught in his throat as he shook with too much anger to speak. He dropped to his knees. “He killed…!”

“Queen Haptandra,” one of the others called out, “we ought to read his thoughts.”

Haruki snapped to attention and turned. The voice that had possessed the metal superhuman had just spoken. The voice belonged to someone who clearly was the god of war.

Haptandra gave a curious look. “Aeriesai, you’ve come up with a good idea for once.” She weaved magic in her hands and shot forward a ball of light. It expanded until the entire surroundings vanished and the gods stood watching the child’s memories.

Haruki would’ve vomited if he had a stomach. The scene played out as before. The gods gasped in horror as one of their own violated and murdered a woman before her child. Haptandra shook with a building rage. Horrified stares and accusing eyes pointed at Zenus.

That’s…odd… Haruki thought.

No one else noticed it but him.

Zenus stared at the scene in utter disbelief and confusion. Before Haruki could process it further, the vision ended and gods crowed their accusations at him. Haptandra stomped her foot and the room went silent. “Zenus!” she bellowed. “You will partake in trial by combat! Should you win against the child as a mortal, you will face no judgment!”

He glanced at the boy, then her. “Please!” Zenus cried. “This makes no sense!”

The look on her face sealed it. He sighed, removed his jewelry and adornments, and descended to the floor below. He wore an expression of solemn acceptance as he saw the boy barely come up to his knee. “Fight!” Haptandra cried.

The boy tried his best, but his punches and kicks proved utterly ineffective. Zenus sent him flying with a kick to the sternum. Korazon threw a kick, but the god grabbed his leg and hurled him. The other gods either gasped or shouted of the injustice of it. Only two didn’t. Haptandra stared with stern eyes that seemed to know. Aeriesai, Haruki saw, had a grin that told of a plan coming together.

“Come on, boy,” Zenus called, as he punched the boy out of the air. “Must we do this?”

Korazon pushed himself to his feet and spat hot blood onto the stone. The look of pure hate and determination brought a sigh to the god’s lips. “Kill you!” was all the boy said.

Zenus shook his head and drew his muscles taut. He swung with everything he had. Korazon saw the blow coming and tensed. Haruki felt the boy’s thoughts.

If I die, the boy thought, I die having tried.

A familiar flame erupted within the boy. Haruki recognized it at once. When he had first gotten his powers and gotten hit by the truck, he saw it. The boy’s body filled with the Spirit of Fire. The boy stuck out a hand with lightning speed and caught the god’s fist midair. The ground exploded as he absorbed the punch with no harm. Zenus barely had time to blink.

Korazon let out a mighty shout before throwing his fist with all his might. It landed in the god’s solar plexus and exploded a foot-wide hole through his body. Zenus crashed to the floor, twitched, and died.

The air went silent. Haruki watched as the determination went out of Korazon like air from a balloon. Seeing his handiwork stunned the boy into silence. He had too many feelings and none at all, with the corpse of his mother’s killer at his feet. Somehow, Haruki knew the emptiness of the kill had seeped in.

“Now, child,” Haptandra said, her voice loud as an avalanche. “Now you have won and must receive the Gift.”

Korazon got knocked from his stupor. “What do you…?”

He never got to finish the sentence. Lightning shot into him and around him, filling every inch with electricity. He collapsed and writhed. His screams filled the cavernous temple as he thrashed in agony.

“Such a shame,” Haptandra cried in amusement, “you won your revenge only to be killed by the Gift of Lightning!”

The Spirit of Lightning’s power, won from the death of Zenus, lit the boy up like a neon sign. His body glowed as it began to tear apart. Haruki heard a faint mumbling amongst the chatter and willed himself over to see. The God of Wind cast a spell, and a gust swirled around the temple and gathered the child in its tempest. The boy became part of the wind. The wind, carried by divine magic, sailed through the cosmos at impossible speed until it landed in the human world.

The spell carried it into the wind currents of an Earth, where it traveled until it found a woman whose fetus had not yet acquired a soul. The wind converted Korazon into a spirit.

The spirit landed in the womb of Rumika Kawakatsu.

The cold breeze against Haruki’s hot skin startled him awake.

“You’re awake!” Kenshi cried as he dabbed a cold rag against Haruki’s forehead.

Of all the places he expected to wake up in, his new friend’s bedroom wasn’t one of them. The room went silent except for the hiss of the air conditioning as he took in the surroundings. He lay on top of a pile of bath towels, most of which were soaked through. Kenshi turned red in the cheeks as Haruki sat up, and realized he wore only his boxers.

“Crap!” he swore. “What the hell!”

Kenshi turned away. “You were lying outside.” He retrieved a tablet off his desk and showed the house’s security camera feeds. A figure obscured by digital video artifacts dropped a naked Haruki on the sidewalk outside the Sugawara residence before walking away. The video cut off when the figure exited the frame. “I couldn’t leave you out there. You were burning up, I barely dragged you into my bedroom.”

Haruki sighed with relief and patted Kenshi on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

“What’s going on?”

Haruki paused and wiped his face with his hand. “I…can’t tell you.” He saw the apprehension at his friend’s question. “I wish I could tell you. Is that okay?”

Kenshi leaned against a wall and looked distant. After a moment, he turned and nodded reluctantly. “I guess that’ll have to do.” He gestured at the hallway. “Down the hall to the left I put some of my clothes and a fresh towel in the bathroom. You can take a shower.”

Haruki nodded and headed towards the bathroom. “Thank you so much.” He bowed to Kenshi before leaving. “I really appreciate it.”

Kenshi smiled but said nothing. As Haruki walked towards the bathroom, he saw on the wall a series of pictures of the Sugawara’s, some with an American-looking man. The father and American wore lab coats and the mother wore a skirt suit, and the couple looked over a decade younger. Next to the picture was a framed newspaper article about the founding of Sugawara Pharmaceuticals. That explains the money, Haruki thought as he shut the bathroom door, dropped his underwear, and paused to gawk at the hotel lobby-sized bathroom. For the briefest of moments he wondered if the tub in the center had been a repurposed city fountain. The shower in the corner could house a full-size refrigerator. It took him several long seconds to figure out the touchscreen (yes, the shower had a freaking touchscreen), and then the foot-wide ceiling-mounted showerhead drenched him in a dense mist.

After making use of some expensive foreign body wash and shampoo, both of which smelled somewhere between a flower garden and a lumber yard, he shut off the water and toweled off. The underwear fit just fine, but the pants and shirt were tight.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Haruki said as he stepped out, fully dried and clean.

“Your dad’s on his way,” Kenshi replied. “I figured I’d better call him.”

Haruki weighed the options. “Yeah, makes sense.” They sat in his room and listened to music until the house’s security system registered an unknown vehicle approaching. The camera feed showed a familiar black sedan. Shinichiro Kawakatsu exited and waved at the cameras. “Gotta go, see you soon.”

Kenshi walked him to the door. His expression seemed to flicker between uncomfortable choices. Finally, he replied, “Best of luck with whatever’s going on!”

Haruki waved and got in the backseat next to his dad.

“Okay,” Kensuke said as he turned his head from the passenger seat. Matomaru put the car in gear and exited just as the Sugawara’s arrived in a slender sports car. The last thing Haruki saw was his friend’s parents reading him the proverbial riot act. “Let’s go over everything you know.”

So, Haruki explained to his superiors everything he’d seen in the vision. They drove on in silence for several long minutes, but his father seemed the most upset. “Your mother gave birth to you!” Shinichiro argued. “You are our son!”

Haruki nodded. “I know.” He hugged his father. “Nothing’s going to change that. I’m just telling you what I saw.”

Kensuke’s reflection in the rear-view mirror showed a solemn expression. He wore the weight of the implications on his face. “Gods and monsters,” he said. “I should’ve known this would happen.” He pulled out his phone and began to text furiously. “Starting tomorrow, I’m pulling you out of school for a while. Tutors will come with all the lessons your teachers provide. You’ll get a few hours of relaxation, but most of your time will be training. Understand?”

“I understand,” Haruki replied. He let out a chuckle. “It’s only going to get more intense from here.”

Kensuke turned his head. “It looks like regardless of who you were, your past is going to come back, like it or not.”

“Sir,” Matomaru cut in, “this is pure speculation on my part, but I feel he’s not a bit player.”

“No,” Haruki commented. He stared straight forward. “My powers make too little sense for me to be unimportant.”