Part 14.3

Heracles VS Lernaean Hydra

Author Note: I was thinking about it and I really wish that GT9 used more draconic symbolism throughout the story when (or if) I revisit Team Crowley VS Rosencreutz I'll have symbolism of Aleister (TheBeast666), Aiwass (Codename: DRAGON) and Coronzon (The Dragon of the Abyss) all have symbology of them being Dragons preying on a God/Hero like CRC and the reversed conflict of Chaos VS Order you see in mythology, I also wanted to achieve something similar with Kakine Teitoku as he can represent the Fallen Angel and the Seraphim but for now I'll try adding draconian symbolism into Gunha VS CRC.
True Expert Christian Rosencreutz, with his golden rosy cross sword, clashed relentlessly against the indomitable force of the Strongest Gemstone, Sogiita Gunha. With each clash of their powers, the air crackled and compressed, and the pavement trembled beneath.
CRC, observed Sogiita with a mixture of intrigue and disdain. "You fight like the legendary Heracles," he remarked, his voice carrying over the din of battle. "But know this, I am the Lernaean Hydra, and no matter how many heads you sever, I shall always rise again!" Rosencreutz roared to slice the #7’s midsection.
Sogiita, his entire body wreathed in unknowable energy, met CRC's blade unyielding. "Bring it on, old man!" he retorted, his voice brimming with confidence. "I'll knock you down as many times as it takes! I won't stop till you come to your senses and remember your roots, like the roses you love so much, Rosencreutz!!"
Their clash intensified, that old man’s higher dimensional sword colliding with the raw power of that boy’s fists and kicks as they pushed each other to their limits with each sword swing, punch, kick and flash.
Sogiita unleashed a barrage of punches, each strike carrying the force of a meteor, while that silver young man countered: he wielded his sword in his right hand and released impacts followed by white light that was enough to previously take down all of The Bridge Builders Cabal.
As the battle raged on, the very fabric of reality seemed to warp and shift around them, bearing witness to the titanic struggle between two unparalleled forces.
The founder of Rosicrucianism who intimidated reality itself to obey his will and that Gemstone with an unstable personal reality that could change on a whim.
The atmosphere crackled with electrifying distortion.
Sogiita's fists tore through the air with the ferocity of meteors, their velocity enhanced by his ability to adapt and accelerate, surpassing even CRC's speed. As each blow was released, the friction with the surrounding air molecules ignited a scorching heat, intensifying the impact.
The rapid movement of molecules generated an escalating thermal energy, causing the air to seethe with increasing temperature. It was akin to a tempest of incandescent projectiles hurtling towards CRC, their speed surpassing the limits of human perception.
It was like a storm of brilliant fiery arrows was fired at Rosencreutz.
These blazing arrows of force were reminiscent of the elusive strikes employed by the Rose & Cross Leader, ignoring distance with deceptive agility.
With each thunderous punch, that bandana boy sought to overpower his adversary through sheer kinetic force, his unwavering resolve palpable in every motion.
But that wasn't enough for this superhuman.
CRC, wielding his cross sword with precision and skill, deflected each and every one Sogiita's flaming arrows with calculated strikes of his own. Each impact unleashed a burst of blinding white light, sending shockwaves rippling through the chaotic city.
"You think brute strength alone will defeat me?" the silver man taunted, his voice cutting through the chaos of battle. "You may be strong, but strength without strategy is nothing but raw power wasted."
Sogiita grinned, his confidence unshaken. "My strategy is just to knock you out, old man and get you some help old man!" he retorted, his voice ringing with defiance. "I'll K.O. you with my fists and guts alone!!!!"
Rosencreutz's eyes narrowed as he parried another of Sogiita's punches. "Your arrogance will be your downfall," he warned, his tone tinged with certainty. "I may not match your overall speed, but I have something you lack: intellect and precision.”
Christian Rosencreutz then plunged his cross sword into the ground.
"This is what harmed Kamijou Touma," he declared, grinning and unleashing a torrent of lethal invisible attacks from his outstretched palms.
However, the #7 countered with a relentless barrage of flaming arrows from the thermal aftershock of his punches.
Each strike akin to a particle accelerator in its intensity and speed. That Gemstone was the particles being fired on the right and that True Expert was the particles fired on the left.
As the attacks clashed, the battlefield became a spectacle of raw power and precision.
“Roar!” CRC held his open palm to his mouth and blew gently on the tip of the middle finger.
That was all it took for a blaze easily outdoing a flamethrower to rush out. And this was not just any fire. It fed on the power of a ley line and stole vitality from space itself. This overwhelming mass of light and heat was wielded for no other purpose than to take lives. Anyone who tried to survive it using simple composite armor or special fibers would dry up and burn away in less than a second.
But that wouldn't kill another superhuman would it?
Of course not.
“Aaaaarghhhh!!!!” screamed the #7.
Some assaults bypassed the fray entirely, slipping through the chaos like elusive particles in a collider.
A smokescreen.
Those brilliant fireworks from hell weren't meant to take Sogiita’s life. They were meant to disrupt the Gemstone's senses and sight so he couldn't counter all of that old man’s deadly attacks.
Invisible strikes found their mark on that Gemstone, and the searing arrows of the arrows scorched Rosencreutz.
CRC was wounded but he rejected to make any whimpers. Instead with a sudden burst of velocity, the young silver man picked up his cross sword from the ground and launched a flurry of strikes, cutting at the #7’s body with pinpoint accuracy.
His arms, his head, his face, his stomach, his legs, his midsection, his back.
Each blow landed with devastating force, causing Sogiita to stagger back under the onslaught.
If that bandana boy hadn't had his defenses and general stats raised by the #5 he’d be cut to pieces.
The #7 fell on his back.
"There's a fire," Sogiita declared, his voice ringing out amidst the chaos of battle.
With each attempt to break his spirit, Sogiita's resolve only grew stronger, fueling the flames of his determination. "Every time someone tries to make me give up, it's like wind feeding my flames, making them burn even brighter just like my punches," he explained, his words carrying the weight of his unwavering determination.
He refused to stay down.
With a roar of defiance, Sogiita surged forward once more, his movements blurring with speed as he disappeared from view. In the blink of an eye, he reappeared behind Christian Rosencreutz, catching the magician off guard.
"Hey, old man," Sogiita taunted, his voice filled with confidence as he seized Rosencreutz from behind.
Christian Rosencreutz's eyes widened in surprise as he realized he had been outmaneuvered.
As Sogiita Gunha faced off against Christian Rosencreutz in their airborne duel, he felt the flames of determination burning within him, driving him forward with unstoppable force.
Before he could react, the boy lifted him effortlessly and slammed him onto the pavement below with a resounding thud.
"I'm not just a kick-boxer!!" Sogiita sang.
As the impact reverberated through the air, the young silver man let out a pained cry. The force of the collision compressed the surrounding air, heating it up until it crackled with energy. Christian Rosencreutz's head struck the ground with a velocity equivalent to mach 20, igniting his body in flames upon impact.
This move is called a suplex.
Struggling to regain his bearings, Rosencreutz muttered in a daze, "The House of the Holy Spirit...the seven walls..."
"You said it yourself, didn't you?" the gutsy boy retorted, cocky. "My power and my guts can break through your impenetrable walls. And I can spread those same guts to the world around me."
With a grimace, Christian Rosencreutz acknowledged the truth of the boy's words. "Your uncontrolled AIM field grants you the ability to imbue non-organic objects with the properties of your virus," he observed, his voice tinged with begrudging admiration. "Allowing them to bypass even the defenses of the seven-walled tomb.”
"A virus? Don't be so gutless, CRC," the #7 retorted, his voice filled with defiance. "This battleground ruled by wills is a two-way road between you and me."
Christian Rosencreutz raised an eyebrow at the boy's words. "Hey Gemstone, you could've killed me if I weren't a superhuman with an idealized body that accomplished The Great Work and crossed the Ungrund, what then short-stack?" he questioned while fitting an insult against his height.
Even without the seven-walled tomb or sheets of diamonds Rosencreutz was cartoonishly durable.
"Sorry, old man," Sogiita retorted, a hint of irritation lacing his words at the jab about his height. "I may have let my enthusiasm get the better of me, but rest assured, I understand the magnitude of this battle. Just like the Hydra, no matter how many heads you regrow, I'll persevere until I've completed my labors.”
"Mhm, so you do know your mythology," CRC remarked, a hint of amusement in his voice. "The Lernaean Hydra, or simply Hydra, is a serpentine lake monster in Greek and Roman mythology. Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid, known as an entrance to the Underworld. In the canonical myth, the monster is slain by Heracles as part of his Twelve Labors."
"Yeah, I know," Sogiita replied confidently. "I studied the tales of great gutsy heroes in school.”
"So, short-stack," Christian Rosencreutz began, his voice carrying a hint of scholarly interest. “Have you ever considered the parallels between our battle and ancient Near Eastern religions?”
Sogiita listened intently. "Are you saying you see yourself as a god of war or a hunter?" he inquired.
CRC chuckled softly. "In a sense, indeed. We are both assuming roles in this grand theater, are we not? I, the Hydra, and you, Heracles."
He continued, "Consider the Second Labor of Heracles. Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns, sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised specifically to defeat him. Heracles approached the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelled. To protect himself from the poisonous fumes, he covered his mouth and nose with a cloth and shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, causing it to emerge and terrorize the surrounding villages."
CRC paused, drawing a comparison. “In our own clash, the flaming arrows that Heracles hurled at the Hydra find their echo in your lightning-fast fists, generating shockwaves that ignite the air with their speed and force. It's as though each strike of yours is akin to shooting a flaming arrow, much like Heracles did.”
“Huh? Are you suggesting we're caught in a time loop? That some enigmatic group, like the Bridge Builders Cabal, manipulated events to resurrect you, pitting us against each other in a timeless struggle? I've never met them, and I'm certainly no child of Zeus. Are you implying that our battle will be distorted into a Greek legend by a meddling time traveler?!” frantically asked the boy.
“No, no, you simpleton. This world contains synchronicities. In Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian mythology, the war and hunting god Ninurta was celebrated for his deeds. The Angim credited him with slaying eleven monsters during an expedition to the mountains, including a seven-headed serpent, possibly identical to the Mushmahhu, and Bashmu, whose constellation was later associated with the Hydra by the Greeks. In Babylonian contexts, the Hydra's constellation is also linked to Marduk's dragon, the Mushhushshu.”
“Uhhh….” That shounen boy was dumbfounded.
"Hhm, I suppose calling it a time loop isn't technically wrong," Christian Rosencreutz began, his tone measured. "I'll break it down from history class and reconstruct it through the lens of the occult. Historic recurrence, young Gemstone, is the phenomenon of events echoing throughout time. Whether it's the rise and fall of empires or the repetitive cycles within a single society, it's all part of this grand plan that was decided when Adam ate the forbidden fruit."
The #7 with his guard up but curious listened: "So, history just keeps repeating itself? Just a series of coincidences?"
Christian Rosencreutz shook his head sagely. "There is no such thing as coincidences. Take, for instance, the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, pondered upon by thinkers like Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Nietzsche. While it's said that 'history repeats itself,' it's not quite that simple. Rather, these recurrences stem from identifiable circumstances and chains of causality."
He continued, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of philosophical debate. "Consider the phenomenon of multiple independent discoveries in science or the reproducible findings in natural and social sciences. These recurrences, whether in the form of rigorous experimentation or comparative research, are vital to our understanding of the world."
Christian Rosencreutz paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. "G.W. Trompf, in his seminal work, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, illustrates the recurring patterns of political thought and behavior since ancient times. Through these patterns, history offers us invaluable lessons, often leading to a sense of resonance or déjà vu."
Their words reverberated like a challenge to destiny itself, a testament to their unyielding determination in the face of adversity.
That Gemstone didn't surrender his characteristic fervor. "History echoing through time, huh? It's like the universe itself is stuck on repeat, and we're just caught in the cycle. But you know what? If history's gonna keep looping, then let's break the pattern! Let's smash through those chains of causality and forge our own path. Who cares about déjà vu? We'll create something entirely new, something that'll shake the very foundations of this world and we’ll do it with guts!!!" He defied that silver monster.
But Rosencreutz wasn't finished. He pulled out his Crystal World Map.
The supposedly old man listened intently to that boy's impassioned response, his expression inscrutable behind his clairvoyant card. After a moment of contemplation, he spoke.
“Gemstone, you speak of breaking free from the chains of repetition, of forging a new destiny against the backdrop of eternal return. It is a noble aspiration, indeed. However, consider this: eternal return is not merely a philosophical concept or a whimsical notion of fate. It is the very fabric of existence, woven into the nature of time itself.” He pressed his finger on the Miniature Garden and a 3D holographic projection flew out—
“In ancient times, the Stoics grappled with the idea, seeing in it both a sense of cosmic order and a challenge to individual agency. Augustine and others recoiled from its implications, fearing it as a negation of free will and salvation. And yet, Nietzsche, in his brilliance, dared to confront the concept anew, exploring its depths in the crucible of human consciousness.”
Didn't Aleister Crowley say that he had to shatter every single phase in order to eliminate the concept of fate?
“I will shatter every last phase and put an end to all mysticism. It can be helped and we need not restrain our tears and bite our lip when faced with tragedy. I will bring back the pure world in which everyone can feel anger like normal and question it all like normal!!”
And didn't Coronzon appear to break down all the phases including the Pure World?
Partial destruction would be meaningless. If anything remains and an eternal distortion is born from that, then it will all happen again. I will eliminate the ten spheres, the twenty-two pathways, and the hidden eleventh symbol. Collisions between phases? Sparks and spray? You cannot save anyone if you only treat those symptoms. All of the fundamental clogs must be removed. All so we can pass the baton to whoever comes next.”
“Sparks and Sprays…” Rosencreutz muttered.
“Eh?” The #7 didn't quite hear him.
"Beside time stands fate, cruelty's steadfast herald. In the silent chambers of the soul, whispers the most profound wisdom. Humanity, in its folly, neglected to exalt life's splendor, its radiance, its grandeur. Truly, it is a rare gift to comprehend the forces that shape our existence.” That magician spoke in despair.
“From the moment man ate the fruit of knowledge, he guaranteed your species’ failure... Entrusting his future to the whims of fate, man clutches to a flickering hope. Yet, within the Miniature Garden lies the key to all revelation. Beyond the well-trodden path lies the ultimate terminus. It matters not who you are; Death is the sole certainty awaiting all.” he finished with scorn.
Shokuhou Misaki was currently linked to Sogiita Gunha so she was overhearing the entire conversation.
“Are you okay, Leader?” asked Kamijou back at the hospital.
“Yeah…” she responded.
*“Really?” Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “It wasn’t the shock of seeing their school destroyed. Nor was it the fear of having those rioters attack. …They’re afraid of their own power. And after learning how exactly to use that power to survive, they’re not sure they can just switch it off and return to their normal lives. So their gears have ground to a halt.”
Tokiwadai Middle School was a prestigious esper development school.*
The young ladies registered there were Level 3 at the lowest and Level 5 at the highest.
Almost all of the students had a power that surpassed that of a blade or handgun if used properly, but something had become twisted.
Yes.
“A lot of them weren’t really sure why they were training their powers.”
Shokuhou breathed a white breath, wrapped her own arms around herself, and rubbed her thighs together.
Why are you studying?
How many people could give a proper answer to that question? Because my parents told me to, because my teachers taught me to, because that’s how the world works. Those would be most people’s answers. Even the students with a clear vision of their future would only have something vague like “for the entrance exams” or “for my future”.
Only a small handful would have specific puzzle pieces in mind, such as “I need to learn how to use this equation so I can build a rocket”.
The young ladies of Tokiwadai Middle School were the same.
What if the very gears that humans have…their actions, reactions, inactions were all the result of some transcendental entity hovering above.
Like God or The Devil watching over humanity’s reality sphere and ordering around his system like everyone was a pre-programmed NPC that had specific events occur to them to get them to develop in the way that they did and determined their genetic bloodline that composed their psyche?
Is there truly a free will?
It was said that in order for you to break out of the system of society that the working class was stuck in you had to climb to the top where the corrupt elites resided.
Imagine Breaker negated sparks, Aleister Crowley could see through the veil thanks to Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass, Great Demon Coronzon could always see the cogs.
Christian Rosencreutz could view the entire world through his Miniature Garden.
The rest of humanity was at the mercy of their own destinies.
A Guardian Angel wouldn't arrive to save a parent’s child from fate every single time.
"Okay, nice poetry, can we get back to fighting already?" asked the #7 impatiently.
"Seems I got carried away," the old man conceded with a nod. "The synchronicities of this world, akin to the astral configurations in astrology, serve as an example of synchronicity, according to Jung. It describes circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection, much like the parallel relationship between celestial and terrestrial phenomena. Synchronicity experiences entail subjective encounters where coincidences between events in one's mind and the external world may lack a clear causal link but still harbor an unknown connection.”
"Ah," Sogiita chimed in, recalling his philosophy class discussions. "We talked about synchronicity back then. Jung thought it was a good thing for the mind, but said it could get dicey in psychosis. He cooked up this theory as a kind of mental link between those meaningful coincidences, calling it a noncausal principle. This term came about in the late 1920s, and then he teamed up with physicist Wolfgang Pauli to dive deeper. Their work, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, dropped in 1952. They were big on this idea that these connections, even the ones that don't seem to have a cause, could still teach us a lot about how our minds and the world work."
“Mhm, you know more than you lead on, Gemstone.” pondered CRC.
“Oh this? My teachers say I'm not good at remembering speeches hahaha…” The #7 looked slightly nervous. “You know, analytical psychologists really push for folks to get what these experiences mean to boost their awareness instead of just feeding into superstitions. But funny thing is, when clients spill about their synchronicity experiences, they often feel like no one's really hearing them out, or getting where they're coming from. And hey, having a bunch of these meaningful coincidences flying around can sometimes ring the schizo bell. Delusions aren't healthy.”
Where was this conversation going?
"Delusion! Hah! That's a good one coming from you," CRC fired back.
"The real delusion is thinking humanity isn't worth a darn," Sogiita shot back, pulling out some info from Johansen and Osman. "Some scientists think coincidences are just random flukes, but counselors and psychoanalysts reckon there's more to it, like some deep-down stuff needing to come out. Unconscious material to be expressed."
Rosencreutz interjected, his expression reflecting a mix of confusion and concern. "Aleister Crowley's actions have left a lasting scar on this world and this city," he began, his voice weighted with solemnity. “The vacuum-like dichotomy between magic and science created by the use of that colossal psychotronic weapon, has damaged this world's memory almost irreparably.”
Psychotronic weapon?
The Archetype Controller?
He paused, his gaze piercing as he continued, "Jung's exploration of synchronicity as evidence of the paranormal paved the way for further inquiry, notably by Koestler and the subsequent embrace of these ideas by the New Age movement.”
Sogiita shrugged, "Some folks say synchronicity is impossible to test or prove, so it gets labeled as pseudoscience. Jung even acknowledged that these synchronicity events are basically just coincidences, statistically speaking. But hey, who's to say what's really going on without some solid scientific studies, right?"
"Dubious as his experiments may have been," CRC interrupted, "Jung believed in a connection between synchronicity and the paranormal, drawing parallels to the uncertainty principle and works by parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine.” CRC posed a thought-provoking question, "How are we to recognize acausal combinations of events, since it is obviously impossible to examine all chance happenings for their causality? The answer lies in the fact that acausal events are most readily expected where a causal connection appears inconceivable upon closer reflection. It's impossible, with our current resources, to explain ESP or meaningful coincidences as mere phenomena of energy. This challenges the very notion of cause and effect, as these events occur simultaneously rather than in a linear cause-and-effect manner. Hence, I have coined the term 'synchronicity' to describe this phenomenon, placing it on equal footing with causality as a principle of explanation."
Getting closer to that Gemstone, CRC emphasized, "Esper abilities cannot be fully understood with science alone. They defy traditional cause-and-effect explanations, instead representing a convergence of factors that create a quantum phenomenon affecting both the micro and macro. Why were there the naturally gifted and the naturally ungifted?”
Why did some students get praised for their abilities while others needed to work harder?
Others among them would have worked every hour of their free time and not progressed anywhere in this city’s leveling curriculum.
Why did this city present such an unfair and unpredictable status quo of potential?
Why did hard work barely matter in a city of empirical evidence to record any possible progress?
Sogiita Gunha wasn't a normal Level 5 but he wasn't always this powerful. He went through the curriculum same as everyone but if the outside conditions for his Gemstone ability to manifest didn't form in the exact way that it did, in such an acausal form then would he even be here to challenge Christian Rosencreutz right now?
Everything just happened to fall right into place.
All those puzzle pieces that would lead to this moment here and now.
Was it all just talent? God picking a fool as his champion?
The #7 leaned back, absorbing CRC's words with a thoughtful expression. "So, what you're saying is, there's this whole other layer to reality that we can't quite wrap our heads around," he summarized, nodding slowly. "I mean, it's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands—slippery and elusive."
He chuckled, shaking his head slightly. "Historic recurrence, synchronicities, all these things—they're like pieces of a puzzle scattered across this substantial reality. And sometimes, they just... click into place, right? It's like the universe has its own plan, and we're just along for the ride."
That bandana wearing boy's gaze drifted, lost in thought. "You know, CRC, it's funny," he remarked, a wry smile playing on his lips. "Here we are, with all our powers and potential, but at the end of the day, we're still grappling with the same questions as everyone else. Talent, destiny, divine intervention—maybe they're all just different sides of the same coin."
He shrugged, the weight of the philosophical musings settling over the broken city. "Who knows? Maybe God does have a sense of humor, after all.” that boy chuckled.
There was a deep silence between them.
Rosencreutz’ response was swift and resolute, his tone filled with certainty. "All this ‘universe has a plan’ banter is just a distraction from the inevitable," he declared, his eyes narrowing. "We can debate the nature of us being all-powerful yet struggling with mortal issues until the sun burns out, but it won't change the fact that our fate was sealed upon the knowledge Adam learned."
“To think so many trivialities have developed while this old man wasn’t watching. Heh heh. Then I should assume the thread of fate has again begun to weave its strange connections between myself and some unknown human.”
He rose forward, his movements purposeful. "It's time to put an end to this dance of platitudes," CRC continued, his voice cold and unwavering. "We'll settle this the only way that somewhat matters—through objective action in this grand play."
“Silence, preserved doll. Illusionists are meant to remain silent. That is all we magicians are: wielders of substanceless illusions. Opening your mouth serves only to break the illusion.”
With a flicker of resolve in his eyes, he locked gazes with the #7. "I am Hydra, Gemstone," he said, his voice carrying a hint of challenge. "Our battle ends now.” CRC opened both his palms and began shooting at their surroundings, the buildings, the pavement, the apartments, the rubble.
It probably wasn't random as it seemed to create a pattern.
“Huh are you getting senile old man?” asked the young Gemstone.
“What fun. I never imagined someone would bother diligently polishing their skills this far while knowing it is all essentially an illusion. Didn’t you ever feel silly going to the effort?”
Rosencreutz dropped to all fours, his rosy cross sword gripped tightly in his right hand.
He moved—
“Arrgh!” Sogiita yelled amidst the relentless and precise and precise strikes from that golden cross. “Old man?” he asked.
That magician didn't say anything.
That silver man’s movements became more beastly.
Faster.
Stronger.
Fiercer.
Something new was beginning to manifest.
With each strike of his higher dimensional blade that old man’s blows seemed infused with an otherworldly energy.
The wounds inflicted by his weapon burned with a venomous intensity, sending searing pain coursing through Sogiita's body.
That boy grimaced as the poison from that silver man’s strikes surged through his being, each wound feeling like it was ablaze with venomous fire.
"Damn... That burns…like a killer hornet’s sting," he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice strained with effort. Gritting, he fought to maintain his focus, despite the agony threatening to overwhelm him.
Was this another application of The Four Stages? Citrinitas? No, there was nothing yellow here, it was more like a dirty purple.
But it wasn't just the physical damage that posed a threat.
As the Rosy Cross leader leaped on all fours his movements took on an almost erratic quality, he was bouncing from one building to another with an animalistic agility.
With each jump, a shockwave rippled through the air, carrying with it a palpable sense of dread.
Something was spreading.
The air around them seemed to thicken with a toxic miasma. The #7 struggled to breathe, the noxious fumes clouding his senses.
Like a chaotic monster’s venomous poison breath.
The once-clear air now felt thick and suffocating.
Gasping for breath, the bandana boy struggled to maintain his focus amidst the swirling chaos.
His vision blurred, his movements sluggish as he fought against the oppressive atmosphere.
Blinded that heroic boy could only fire a flame arrow without his sight.
His fists striking out with all the strength he could muster. Igniting in that poisonous compressed air.
It seemed to be flammable like a dragon’s breath.
???
At the hospital, Shokuhou's voice carried a mix of surprise and relief. “He caused real damage.” she exclaimed.
Kamijou turned his attention to her, intrigued. “What happened?”
“It's hard to see clearly, but it looks like the #7 managed to blast off CRC's left arm,” she explained. “Though, I'd say it was more of a lucky shot. I can read he acted on pure instinct.”
Kamijou nodded, a hint of melancholy in his tone. “Yeah... the psychic link and all.”
Had the #7 Level 5 given up on the old man?
Back on the battlefield, Sogiita cursed under his breath. “Dammit... Sorry, old man,” he muttered. “I was aiming to hit your whole body to maximize the surface area, maybe break a few bones as a casualty. We can probably get your arm reattached at the hospital. Heaven Canceller has enough guts to even fix me.”
It was clear—he hadn't given up.
It was an accidental strike of his arm.
“As each ghastly head was severed from its serpentine form, dreadfully, two more writhed forth from the abyss.” a cryptic voice amidst the chaos spoke.
Wasn't it said that the Hydra’s lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid.
Lerna was reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld.
The abyss.
The Ungrund.
There is no limit to the depth of the Alcyonian Lake, and I know of nobody who by any contrivance has been able to reach the bottom of it since not even Nero, who had ropes made several stades long and fastened them together, tying lead to them, and omitting nothing that might help his experiment, was able to discover any limit to its depth. This, too, I heard. The water of the lake is, to all appearance, calm and quiet but, although it is such to look at, every swimmer who ventures to cross it is dragged down, sucked into the depths, and swept away.
The keeper of the gate to the Underworld that lay in the waters of Lerna was the Hydra.
The serpentine Lake Monster.
“Rosencreutz……?” The #7 muttered.
That magician chuckled ominously. "No, young Heracles, Hydra." he intoned, his voice echoing with a bizarre resonance. “The Lernaean Hydra's curse is upon you now.” as he said that he cut off a bit of his arm that was cuterarised with his golden blade and it began bleeding.
Anna Sprengel’s blood was said to create unknown miracles when spilled.
Christian Rosencreutz’ blood was so virulent that even its scent was deadly.
As Sogiita Gunha glanced at his severed arm lying on the ground, a creeping sense of horror enveloped him. "All of fate is a curse and that curse," he murmured, his words barely audible over the din of battle, "extends even to my severed limb.”
Christian Rosencreutz’ left arm grew back.
No.
Two new arms grew in its place.
The fate of chaoskampf? The hero battling the dragon?
The arm was fully functioning with no defects.
Although one of the arms appeared somewhat scaly and lanky like a serpent.
It had human anatomy but something was abnormal here.
He almost looked like a spider as he emerged from the poisonous fog as he remained on all fours.
“So short-stack. Are you ready to complete your final labor: Crossing the abyss!!!” He challenged that boy with his cross sword facing him.
"Boss, what's up? You look kinda stuck," Kamijou asked, his tone concerned.
Two students were sitting together in the waiting room at a hospital.
"—abyss, Hydra, curse, synchronicities, Historic recurrence." she replied, her words carrying a weight of unease.
"Huh? What? Can you give me the lowdown?" Kamijou prodded, his urgency evident.
"Can't quite wrap my head around it. But what I can tell you is that after CRC started talking about these esoteric concepts, he leveled up his power ability, managed to seriously hurt the #7 despite me cranking up all his stats for the win condition," the honey-blonde girl explained, frustration creeping into her voice.
"Can you beam all that stuff into my head, like a memory download? You're a psychological esper, right? My right hand won't mess with it, and we've done the telepathy thing before," Kamijou suggested.
"Memory download's not quite it, but I can send you a recording," she clarified.
"Got it," Kamijou muttered as he absorbed the info.
"You got any ideas to help the #7’s situation ability, Kamijou-san? We're kinda desperate here," she asked.
"I wish Index was still here, dammit.” he lamented, “But you know about magic, right?" he queried.
"Yeah, people converting their delusions into reality right?," she admitted.
"Well, magic's not just about delusions; it can be tied up to the whole world. Not sure if it's relevant, but based on Idol Theory, Rosencreutz might be pulling in 'energy’ from the Greek 'phase’ of Heracles for an edge," Kamijou theorized.
"Like a chessboard flip?" Shokuhou Misaki inquired, her brow furrowed with concern.
"No, more like... imagine you're playing checkers with a buddy, and you're totally crushing it because you're a checkers pro. Then suddenly, your buddy switches it up and challenges you to an arm wrestling match, and you lose because, well, arm wrestling isn't your forte," Kamijou Touma explained, trying to paint a vivid picture.
"So, by taking on the role of the Hydra from Greek myth, he's essentially forcing the #7 into the role of Heracles? But didn't Heracles defeat the Hydra?" Shokuhou sought clarification.
"Yeah, but..." Kamijou recalled the tale from the movies he'd seen. "Lichas gave Heracles a shirt soaked in the Hydra's poisonous blood from his arrows, which ends up killing him by tearing his flesh down to the bone," he elaborated.
"It was actually Nessus seeking vengeance and tricking Deianira into giving it to Heracles as a gift, delivered by Lichas without disclosing the tunic's lethal bloodstained secret from the Lernaean Hydra, but you're right," Shokuhou corrected gently. "So, Rosencreutz is harnessing the power of that legend to slowly poison the #7?"
"Not literal. I mean the poison is real but his slashes do significant harm now so it's more like shifting the paradigm in his favor…shifting his position.” The spiky-haired boy wasn't in the mood to explain Phases, “Earlier, he mentioned Sogiita spreading his 'virus' throughout the world. A virus isn't a poison in the traditional sense, but the Rosicrucians originally sought to create a universal cure for all illnesses. Now, CRC is spreading a literal poison, positioning himself as the ultimate predator and his opponents as prey rather than his savior role, the paradigm has been shifted." Kamijou concluded, his voice tinged with gravity.
“So he’s changed the environment to get the win condition? The #7’s durability doesn't matter in the face of the world being forced to go about a certain way because of Rosencreutz stage play?” The girl asked.
“Yeah…if things keep going this way…Sogiita will….goddamnit….” The spiky haired boy swore. “I can't let someone else die after all that's happened but I feel like if I go out there I really will kill him…” he muttered that last bit while clenching his right fist that began shaking uncontrollably.
The girl’s eyes seemed confused.
“What did you say?” The honey blonde middle schooler asked.
“Nothing, just mumbling to myself.” he spat out.
That boy and girl could never come to the right conclusion on their own without the aid of former Magic God Othinus by their side.
“Did you think I had challenged you with no hope of succeeding, you cesspool? The magic born on earth is bound by the directions based on the earth’s magnetic field and by the density and composition of the air which is determined by air pressure which is in turn influenced by gravity. That is inevitable when you are focused on the cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west or on the basic elements of fire, water, wind, and earth. But what you will find upon leaving the atmosphere is an unknown. Coronzon, are you sure there will be no malfunction in the magic giving you control of Avatar Lola? And before, my power was bound by the puny speck named earth which failed to become a black hole or even a sun, but once we enter outer space, just how far do you think that power will be released? I do not mind at all that I will lose the support of Academy City.”
Well the boy was half right.
“Let us test it out, you cuspidor. On one side, we have you using the planet and bound to an avatar. On the other, we have me exposed and freed from the planet. Now, who will be the star of this show?”
Christian Rosencreutz did not shoot at his surroundings for no reason.
The battlefield transformed into Rosencreutz's canvas, resembling the legendary battleground of Lerna where Heracles once clashed with the Hydra.
Yes.
He didn't unleash his powers randomly; every action was deliberate.
In the magical side of Idol Theory, mimicking an object, event, or person allowed one to tap into a fraction of its power.
And that even applied to locations that essentially worked as stage plays.
Idol Theory was so absolute that even the basic cross held a portion of the son of God’s power.
As Above, So Below.
As Below, So Above.
Macro to micro.
Micro to macro.
And the macrocosm and the microcosm are always linked.

Memory transcription subject: Captain Kalsim, Krakotl Alliance Command
Date: [REDACTED]
The approach to the Skaven homeworld had been nerve-wracking. None of us had expected the discovery of a new sapient Predator species, let alone one cunning enough to get so close before indulging their hunger.
The Skaven’s cruel deception had been on full display as we passed through Venlil Prime. The surface was a ghost town of ransacked buildings, blood-stained plazas and hastily erected idols devoted to their heathen god. We bombarded the surface thoroughly, even going so far as to eradicate the uninhabitable land beyond the equator to make certain that no predatory taint would survive.
Despite the ease of the cleansing, it only left the fleet tense. The brutality on display there was on par with that of the Arxur, and they had achieved this with only primitive weapons and spacecraft. Speaking of, there were no ships to be found in orbit of the conquered planet, neither Skaven or Venlil, which logically meant that the cornered predators had added the more advanced ships to their army, and were consolidating their forces at their homeworld in a desperate bid to hold us off. Such behavior was not unfamiliar to the experienced exterminators under my command, but it was a worrying one. After all, a Predator is at its most dangerous when it’s protecting its nest.
As we finally arrived at their system, we were nonetheless shocked at the sight of their fleet, as the composition of ships was quite unlike anything we had seen before. The addition of Federation freighters commandeered from Venlil Prime were of course expected, as were their desecration, with numerous primitively drawn symbols tainting their hulls. The Skaven ships however, were barely able to be called as such. As far as our sensors could tell, each was merely composed of a single thruster welded to one of their primitive crystal weapons, with a tiny dome on the top serving as a cockpit. The tiny things had nothing in the way of armor or other defenses, displaying a callous disregard for the lives of the pilots. They were clearly made to be mass produced, and mass produced they were, obscuring the view of the planet behind them like a swarm of tiny insects. The only thing they had that even resembled a Capital Ship was a large vessel at the rear of their formation. It had armor aplenty, pieced together from alloys which were recognizable as fragments from the orbital installations missing at Venlil Prime. Multiple federation defense turrets were installed across the hull, modified with their strange green crystals. The only component which hadn’t been stolen from the federation was by far the strangest, a massive Bell installed above the bridge, displayed for all to see.
I had been briefed on Skaven zealotry, but to install such a large icon on their largest ship when they were clearly short on materials seemed wasteful to the extreme. Though, what else could one expect from creatures whose very survival hinged on reckless destruction? As we approached, the sensors showed some of the tiny pests scrambling below the useless hunk of metal, hanging on the ship's exterior in their primitive spacesuits as they struggled to pull the rope attached to the clapper of the bell. Their efforts were fruitless, as despite the metal component striking the side of the instrument it would never-
GONG
A ripple of confusion spread through the bridge, the crew turning their heads every which way in an attempt to locate the source of the noise. The only one who was looking directly at it was me, though I had a hard time believing it. Somehow, in spite of the laws of physics, the sound of the bell ringing had traveled through space, allowing it to be heard on our bridge and, according to the incoming communications from the rest of the fleet, the bridges of our other ships too. Confused, our formation slowed down, as multiple squad commanders requested orders I wasn’t yet in a state of mind to give.
GONG
My suspicions were confirmed as the second striking of the bell coincided with a second ring sweeping across the bridge. With it came a strange sense of foreboding, as some irrational part of me began to fear that something terrible would happen if the predators were permitted to continue ringing the bell. As illogical as the feeling was, it did allow me to regain my wits and speak into the radio. “All battlegroups continue advance, prepare to open fire. Priority target is the enemy flagship.”
GONG
The Flagship remained at the rear of the enemy formation as the rest of the Skaven ships advanced. The fragile fighters died in droves as they moved into firing range. Most were cut down by our weapons, their weak hulls offering so little protection that even our point defense turrets were able to shoot them down. Some of them exploded in violent flashes of green upon being fired upon, often destroying several other craft near them in a deadly chain reaction. The most bizarre casualties however, were self-inflicted, as a few of the tiny craft opened fire upon one another, seemingly unprovoked. It only served as further proof of the importance of their extermination.
GONG
Another ring heralded the survivors making it close enough to return fire, green lightning lancing through the void at our vessels. Flying straight through our formation, a chaotic firefight ensued.
GONG
The fleet’s discipline was tested by the proximity of the predators, and wasn’t found wanting as the fleet held position and fought. The lethality of our barrages had quickly lessened however, as many firing solutions had to be abandoned due to the risk of hitting friendlies, a consideration the Skaven didn’t seem to share as the branching lines of energy torched several of their own.
GONG
Their predatory callousness had paid off however, as the fleet was beginning to take casualties in return. Their weapons raked across our hulls, struggling to get through armor, but causing devastating explosions when they found a weak spot. In the confusion, it was difficult to tell if we were winning.
GONG
The captured Venlil freighters made it into the thick of battle, largely ignored due to the more immediate threat of the fighters. With no weapons, they simply rushed at the largest ships they could reach, ramming into the side. Hull damage suffered in these attacks was minimal, but the ships quickly began to report predators boarding their ship, drowning the defenders in a tide of bullets and bodies. I ordered the affected crews to hunker down, and prepare to scuttle the ship if the enemy could not be repelled.
GONG
A Skaven fighter broke through the defensive ring around our ship, making a dangerously close attack run to tear a rent through the entire length of our hull. It flew close enough that I could see the predator inside looking straight at us with a vicious grin, before the inattentive pilot crashed directly into one of the vessels behind us, destroying both ships in a bright flash.
GONG
The ringing was getting worse, more intense. This latest one could be felt as well as heard, the bridge shaking from the sheer power of the noise. I groaned in pain, my head aching more and more each time the clamor returned. Enough was enough.
“First squad!” I ordered. “Form up, we’re breaking through and taking down that damn flagship.”
GONG
My orders were followed as we pushed forward, cutting a path through the chaos. The Skaven realized what we were doing and began to focus fire on us, but the casualties we had inflicted could finally be felt, as they were too few to intercept us, and we achieved a clear line of sight to their mothership.
GONG
My first officer Jala clicked her beak in delight as her screen lit up with a picture of the flagship. “We have a firing solution for the railgun! Targeting center mass!”
“No!” I interjected. “The Bell! Destroy that accursed bell!”
GONG
The Skaven managed one last ring before Jala aimed at their foul icon and fired, relief flooding into my heart as I witnessed its imminent destruction. However, as the railgun round struck the side of the bell, I realized my mistake.
GONG
Jala’s shot had shattered the bell, but in doing so, had rang it one final time. This final ring was awful indeed, incapacitating the entire bridge crew for several seconds. As I regained my senses, my sense of foreboding began to evaporate. Whatever that strange thing had been, it was destroyed now. Only the cleansing of their world remained.
I looked past the damaged flagship towards the Predator homeworld and found… that I couldn’t see it. A strange green gash in space was stretching out behind the broken bell, green lightning arcing at the edges. I could only stare in terrified awe as the expanse of green grew wide enough to cover the entire viewport, and begin to show a bizarre warped landscape within.
Then, all hell broke loose.
The lightning emitted from the anomaly suddenly gained direction, targeting and decimating our ships seemingly at random. Chittering laughter could be heard among the static on every radio frequency, as vessels reported more predators on their vessels, appearing out of nowhere. As I stared into the abyss, I could just about make out a tall, furred being with long gnarled horns looking over the battlefield. And as its gaze briefly met my own, I had no doubt in my soul that I had just made eye contact with the Skaven God.
With all the will I could muster, I tore my eye away and yelled Jala. "Jala! That thing is responsible for this! Can you get a firing solution?!”
She turned to me and opened her beak. What emerged wasn’t her usual joyous request to open fire, but a torrent of vermin pouring out onto the bridge. The flood did not stop, continuing far beyond what should have been able to fit in her mouth or even her body, and the bridge crew was quickly drowning under them.
Frozen on my perch, I saw the anomaly begin to close as the fleet suffered, and I caught a final glimpse of the figure’s face, as it stared at our suffering with delighted malice.
First - Previous - Next

Klaszin watched.
There were so many things to see. Particularly for one whose eyes had been opened as Klaszin's had. The path to awareness was a long one, measured across the many generations of his family. Each person in that chain had done their part, carefully cultivating the magic within them and ensuring it was properly passed on. This was way to true power. This was the way to magic that reached beyond this world and into the many worlds connected to it.
This ability was new to Humanity. For so long magic had been caged, held fast by the Gods who drained this world of its resources. Earth's mana was stolen, its magic users culled before the seed within them blossomed.
It was only in secret that this power could be cultivated. Only in the remote holds in the blasted wastes could Humanity slowly gather its strength. When Klaszin's eyes opened, all things impossible became possible. The Gods became vulnerable.
At long last, a Godbreaker Mage. One who could finally free Humanity from its shackles.
Beside Klaszin stood a woman, wizened and crippled. Time had been unkind to her body, but her mind shined still. She watched Klaszin just as Klaszin watched the fabric of reality. Occasionally, she tutted, shaking her head slightly. "No. Not him. Not yet."
Klaszin grimaced, frustrated. "Why? I am powerful enough."
She smiled at her son. He was not wrong, but he was not right either. "This is not a question of power. It's a question of the proper ordering of things. Of removing the cancer infecting our world without killing the patient. Slaying Onima would remove our greatest tumor, but we would not survive it. We must nibble at the edges first. Cut away the lesser gods and increase our own resources. Put ourselves in the place of these false idols and restore Humanity to self-determination."
These were not words Klaszin wanted to hear. He was young and impatient. He lusted for grand confrontation, for true justice, not the slaying of pitiful demigods. But his mother had always been his guide, and he was loathe to disappoint her. It was she that showed him the path to Enlightenment. It was she that had taught him how to open his eyes.
He wondered, not for the first time, why she had not done so for herself. He had asked, once, and had received only a thin grin in response.
Then, a ripple. A wave coursing through the fabric as it was pierced. A gate from a world beyond as a God made their way to this world. Klaszin to feel the contours of the gate. The signature. Beside him, his mother tensed, her thin, bony fingers grasping his wrist.
"Yes! Him!" She hissed. "Go."
Klaszin nodded, his hand reaching down to pull a stream of mana from the vast vat sitting behind his chair. His mother would aid in protecting it, as would the others in his retinue, but it would still be his greatest weakness. He pulled the mana into him, connecting his body to the river flowing from the vat. The blue ether pulsed in time with his heart as power filled him. With each passing moment, he felt his magic well up within him. So many things sharpened when he drew upon his family's store.
But it came at a cost. Mana was precious. Every droplet was worth kingdoms. When he drew upon it, he must make the most of it, conserving what he could. God hunting was a terribly expensive business.
Klaszin raised his left hand, two fingers extended, in a vertical slice. A rent in the fabric appeared as a small window between places was carved open. The same hand now sliced horizontally, expanding the window. Then he stood and approached the incision. He reached out with two hands and pulled apart the seams of reality, opening a portal large enough to travel through. His retainers moved quickly, their own magic fortifying the boundaries of the portal, ensuring it would not collapse and separate Klaszin from the flow of mana from the vat.
His mother gave him a small bow. "Fight well, son. A victory against Gonchan, Keeper of Many Things, will alter much in this battle."
"He should not have come," Klaszin replied.
"They are hungry and arrogant. Their dead brothers and sisters can convince them for only so long. Good luck."
Klaszin nodded and then stepped through the portal.
He now stood in a vast throne room, an entire wall open to the air with a view of a vast city beyond. The entire city was nestled between the peaks of two mountains. Atop the taller of the two peaks was a massive, golden temple. Klaszin was familiar with the place, his tutors had taken care to instruct him on all of Humanity's God cities. This was Gon Jhian, capitol of the High Shelf. This was the seat of power for Gonchan. The heart of the land that worshiped him. Tithing their mana to him.
Commotion commenced shortly after Klaszin arrived. Dozens of bodies moved to intercept him as a shrill cry rose above the ruckus. "Intruder! Protect the King!"
Klaszin watched them come, curious. He had been to many different lands and he always found it curious how many things remained the same despite the distance between them. All reacted much the same way to unexpected events, treating every surprise as a threat. It wasn't an odd reaction, and the Kingsguard of Gon Jhian were to be commended for their discipline and speed. But it was still disappointing.
And a waste of mana.
"Stop!" Klaszin said, raising his hands. His fingers danced in front of him, directing streams of mana out. Within moments, the Kingsguard was subdued, the joints of their armor melded together. They tottered a few steps and then toppled over. It would take considerable time and access to a blacksmith to remove them from their makeshift prisons.
Grumbling, Klaszin turned to the King. He expected a man but found a boy, cowering atop an ornate, gold-encrusted throne. Klaszin frowned, "Where is your father?" He searched his memory for the name and found it buried in a dusty corner filled with history lessons from Scholar Hachin. "Yennis?"
The boy swallowed, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. "D-D-dead."
"Fine. You are?"
"King Flaharg."
It was a terrible name, but Klaszin saw little purpose in pointing it out. The new King had enough problems. Besides, Flaharg probably already knew.
"King Flaharg, I am here for Gonchan. I suggest you, and your troops, remain here."
His eyes widened, "Lord...Gonchan? He's returned? It's been so long."
A loud gong rang out from the temple above, reverberating through the valley, announcing the arrival of the God into his domain. Klaszin arched a brow and pointed in the direction of the temple. "I will make my way to him now." He began to make his away across the throne room toward a massive set of doors emblazoned with the symbol of a giant beast. It looked vaguely like a cross between a dragon and a cat. Gonchan.
Flaharg swallowed, "Who are you?" He moistened his lips. "What are you?"
Klaszin paused, "I am Godbreaker Klaszin."
"Godbreaker..." Flaharg repeated, trying to understand. But he would not, not until Klaszin had done what he had come here to do. There was no concept for a Godbreaker in Gon Jhian. There were only Gods. But they would learn soon enough.
Before Flaharg could say more, Klaszin was at the door. He pushed his palm out in front of him, and the doors slammed open, flying off their hinges and careening up the stairs beyond. He spared a brief glance back at the portal behind him and the thin stream of mana flowing through it. Members of retinue were making their way through the portal, their shields marked with the Godbreaker crest. They took up guard beside the portal, their faces grim.
Seeing no reason not to trust the matter to them, Klaszin reached to the smooth wall beside him. A hand of carved stone reached out of the wall and grasped his own hand. Moments later Klaszin was lifted up and then pulled along as the hand ascended the stairway. As much as he would like to float up the stairs, being dragged up by a wall hand was far more efficient. Perhaps, once he had access to more sources of mana, he could use it on luxuries.
Just before the top of the stairway the hand let him go, depositing him in front of a second set of massive doors. These two are subjected to the same treatment, blowing outward and off their hinges, slamming into the temple entryway beyond. Screams rang out as attendants fled his arrival.
Ahead, Klaszin could feel Gonchan stirring, awakening to his presence. Klaszin wished he could have simply opened a portal directly to the God, but it was too dangerous. Until the portal was well-fortified, it was easy to attack, just as Gonchan's portal was right now.
Klaszin could feel the gate in the room beyond the entryway. The God had left it open, but had not protected it. Klaszin wondered at the carelessness of Gods. Perhaps they had been too long unchallenged in their power to be anything other than thoughtless, but it still surprised him. Klaszin had already killed three lesser Gods, one would think that might create a reaction.
But preferences created patterns. Patterns settled into habits. Habits were difficult to root out.
Well, it was to Klaszin's advantage. He crouched down and two hands of polished marble reached up and lay ahold of his feet and ankles, yanking him forward and through the entryway. To either side loomed massive carved statues of Gonchan, the Keeper of Many Things. All these depicted was a mass of mouths, each open and waiting.
The doors ahead, towering and fortified, strained and then gave away at his approach. Klaszin was a Godbreaker, and barriers, regardless of their craft, would not keep him from his objective. As the doors swung inward, cracking on their hinges, they revealed the room beyond. It was an enormous space, dappled with ornate columns supporting a ceiling hundreds of feet above. The center of the chamber was dominated by a massive pool, bubbling and roiling from the heat of a hundred unseen furnaces below. All along the periphery of the room were shelves and display cases, holding precious gems, artifacts, and other treasures stolen from Humanity.
Klaszin took all of this in but remained focused on the pool. He could feel the portal between worlds deep below, obscured by the waters. He could also sense Gonchan, squirming its way toward the portal.
"Coward!" Klaszin snarled. The marble hands pulled him across the floor and to the pool. He peered down into the clouded depths, pulling mana from his thread to aid his perception. The portal was distant, but not unreachable. Traveling to it through the boiling water would be dangerous, but possible. It was unlikely to make a difference, Gonchan was faster and closer to the portal. Klaszin would not reach it in time.
The Godbreaker frowned, frustrated, as he considered unappealing options.
He would not get another chance at this. This was the time to act. Even if it came at a terrible cost, removing Gonchan from the pantheon would be worth it. Klaszin focused and called a much greater thread of mana through the portal. The torrent rushed into him, coursing through his body and setting his veins on fire. His eyes flared blue, crackles of energy sizzling at the corners. He knelt down, pressing both palms flat against the marble bordering the pool. He could feel the great slabs of it reaching deep into the ground beneath the temple, cradling the pool.
Mana began to flow into those slabs, concentrating on unseen fissures. Precious seconds trickled by before a groan rattled through the temple as the slabs began to crack, releasing the water from the pool through a thousand holes. Steam rose off the roiling water as it swirled away, and Kalszin leapt in, following it down into the rapidly draining cistern.
Klaszin could see portions of Gonchan's massive form appear from the pool as the great beast was tossed around by the rapidly receding water, drawn away from the portal it so desperately sought to reach. Klaszin had studied each of the Gods, but seeing them in person always cemented the nature of his task -- each God was a being of terrible beauty. Gonchan was no different.
According to his scholars, Gonchan was a Hydratic Leviathan. A creature of immense size, far beyond those populating Earth, its natural habitat was the boiling oceans of its own world. It feasted upon almost anything it could reach with its many gaping maws, though it took particular pleasure in objects of worth, particularly those vested with magical properties. The vast shelves in the temple chamber were priceless by any measure but in this place they were reduced to morsel for the God to dine upon at its leisure.
The water continued to drain away, bringing more of Gonchan in the view. Steam billowed in great gouts around it, but Klaszin could see the beast well enough. The center of its mass was an enormous body, mottled brown and oblong. Long, dragging tentacles emerged from it, interspersed with writhing serpentine necks capped with mouths ringed with rows of gnashing teach. On the body itself, a dozen oozing unblinking eyes stared outward at Klaszin as he approached.
[Who are you to stand before a GOD?]
The words rang out in Klaszin, drowning out his thoughts and pushing a compulsion on him to kneel. It was not the first time Klaszin had to contend with God Speak, but it still frayed his nerves. His opened eye saw it for what it was -- a forceful but intricate application of mana -- and pushed the compulsion aside.
Klaszin would not bow before a God.
"I am the Godbreaker," he replied. He brought his hands up into a steeple before him, gathering a mana blade in the small space between them. Then he drew his left hand downward, pulling the now formed blade along with it. It extended outward from his hand by few feet, a shimmering blue pane of energy. He raised his hand beside his head and then swiped it down in a chopping motion. The blue pane of energy released on the downward swing and flew through the air, meeting the fleshy neck of one of the mouths and severing it.
The God squealed, black ichor spraying from the severed mouth.
"You should not have come Gonchan. This is not your world. It is ours." Another blade slashed outward, severing a grasping tentacle in the process of trying to drag Gonchan along the floor of the cistern and toward the portal on the other side. "I am your end."
[I will feast upon you.]
A great gnashing of maws followed the words as multiple heads dove toward Klaszin. Marble hands reached up and lay ahold of Klaszin's feet once again and he slid along the cistern floor in a half crouch, occasionally leaping over the drainage holes he had created earlier. As the mouths darted forward, they were dealt with, the mana blade slicing through each, severing in some cases or carving off great heaps of flesh in others.
Severed heads began to reform, two maws emerging from the oozing stump. With each additional set of mouths, the corpus of the main body shrank slightly, providing substance to form the heads. An ocrean of mana flowed through the God as it sustained its attack. The assault was brutal but simple. Gonchan was a beast and followed its natural tendencies. These were understandable and exploitable.
Klaszin slowly circled the cistern, defending against the head and tentacles as he made his way to the portal. Unlike his own, it was a massive aperture easily a few hundred feet in diameter. As a gate between worlds, Klaszin could not peer beyond its surface, but he could feel the connection to the place beyond. Klaszin wished dearly to move through the portal and wreak vengeance on the world beyond just as Gonchan had done here, but it was not possible. His thread of mana could not follow him there.
All he could do was punish Gonchan for coming here.
Klaszin began to tear at the unprotected edges of the portal, collapsing the rent in the fabric and helping the tear to mend. Gonchan began to emit a keening wail as the portal began to fragment and dissolve. Klaszin had little concept of how Gods formed these portals but he knew creating one was no simple thing even for the Gods. Once lost, they became stranded in this world. Captured.
Klaszin studied Gonchan. Much of its massive body had been fed into new maws. Hundreds of them now swarmed about snapping futilely at Klaszin, who stood beyond their reach.
[FEAST!]
[FEAST!]
[FEAST!]
Gonchan screamed in his mind. Klaszin could feel the rage and hunger in the God. He could also sense the fear. Without the waters, it was growing cold and lethargic. With the new heads it was draining its energy far faster than normal. It needed food. It needed to escape this cold, miserable place.
It would not.
While the heads and tentacles flailed and writhed, Klaszin gathered pushed mana through his body once again, slowly shaping a ball of energy before him. It took some time to form, it was no simple thing to construct a weapon capable of killing a God. Once the ball had reached a sufficient size he began to draw it out, pushing energy into an infinitesimally small point of energy and then flaring out from there into a spearhead.
By the time he was done the mana spear was over two dozen feet long with massive rivulets of power coursing along its length. Dimly, Klaszin could sense the draining tank of mana back through the portal and regretted the cost of the weapon.
But there was nothing to be done.
God hunting was a terribly expensive business.
Klaszin began to feed mana into the propulsion apparatus at the tail of the spear, loading it with enough energy to travel to and through the God. Only when he was absolutely certain he had done enough to complete the task at hand did he release it.
The mana spear shot through the space between him and Gonchan, leaving a brilliant brue streaking afterimage in Klaszin's eyes. It pierced the great corpus of the God and disappeared in, leaving charred flesh at the entrypoint. Moments later Gonchan's body began to pulse blue and white as destructive fire lanced through it, traveling up the necks of the maws and then spraying outward as it was burned from within.
Within moments, the God shuddered and then was dead.
Klaszin stared at the beast, hating it. Centuries had passed with Gonchan weighing upon this land. Countless lives and treasures had disappeared into that being, only for it to demand more. It was the Keeper of Many Things, and it had taken all of them. There was no regaining what had been lost. The mana had been consumed or stored in the world beyond. It would take time for the people of this land to recover.
He let out a long sigh.
Marble hands reached up and lay hold of his feet, pushing him up the cistern and away from the great body of the dead God. Another gone, but so many still remained. Twenty-seven. Less and Greater.
Resjin with Many Hands
Nightstealer.
Onima.
They were all out there, taking from Humanity.
And Klaszin the Godbreaker would kill them all.

Klaszin watched.
There were so many things to see. Particularly for one whose eyes had been opened as Klaszin's had. The path to awareness was a long one, measured across the many generations of his family. Each person in that chain had done their part, carefully cultivating the magic within them and ensuring it was properly passed on. This was way to true power. This was the way to magic that reached beyond this world and into the many worlds connected to it.
This ability was new to Humanity. For so long magic had been caged, held fast by the Gods who drained this world of its resources. Earth's mana was stolen, its magic users culled before the seed within them blossomed.
It was only in secret that this power could be cultivated. Only in the remote holds in the blasted wastes could Humanity slowly gather its strength. When Klaszin's eyes opened, all things impossible became possible. The Gods became vulnerable.
At long last, a Godbreaker Mage. One who could finally free Humanity from its shackles.
Beside Klaszin stood a woman, wizened and crippled. Time had been unkind to her body, but her mind shined still. She watched Klaszin just as Klaszin watched the fabric of reality. Occasionally, she tutted, shaking her head slightly. "No. Not him. Not yet."
Klaszin grimaced, frustrated. "Why? I am powerful enough."
She smiled at her son. He was not wrong, but he was not right either. "This is not a question of power. It's a question of the proper ordering of things. Of removing the cancer infecting our world without killing the patient. Slaying Onima would remove our greatest tumor, but we would not survive it. We must nibble at the edges first. Cut away the lesser gods and increase our own resources. Put ourselves in the place of these false idols and restore Humanity to self-determination."
These were not words Klaszin wanted to hear. He was young and impatient. He lusted for grand confrontation, for true justice, not the slaying of pitiful demigods. But his mother had always been his guide, and he was loathe to disappoint her. It was she that showed him the path to Enlightenment. It was she that had taught him how to open his eyes.
He wondered, not for the first time, why she had not done so for herself. He had asked, once, and had received only a thin grin in response.
Then, a ripple. A wave coursing through the fabric as it was pierced. A gate from a world beyond as a God made their way to this world. Klaszin to feel the contours of the gate. The signature. Beside him, his mother tensed, her thin, bony fingers grasping his wrist.
"Yes! Him!" She hissed. "Go."
Klaszin nodded, his hand reaching down to pull a stream of mana from the vast vat sitting behind his chair. His mother would aid in protecting it, as would the others in his retinue, but it would still be his greatest weakness. He pulled the mana into him, connecting his body to the river flowing from the vat. The blue ether pulsed in time with his heart as power filled him. With each passing moment, he felt his magic well up within him. So many things sharpened when he drew upon his family's store.
But it came at a cost. Mana was precious. Every droplet was worth kingdoms. When he drew upon it, he must make the most of it, conserving what he could. God hunting was a terribly expensive business.
Klaszin raised his left hand, two fingers extended, in a vertical slice. A rent in the fabric appeared as a small window between places was carved open. The same hand now sliced horizontally, expanding the window. Then he stood and approached the incision. He reached out with two hands and pulled apart the seams of reality, opening a portal large enough to travel through. His retainers moved quickly, their own magic fortifying the boundaries of the portal, ensuring it would not collapse and separate Klaszin from the flow of mana from the vat.
His mother gave him a small bow. "Fight well, son. A victory against Gonchan, Keeper of Many Things, will alter much in this battle."
"He should not have come," Klaszin replied.
"They are hungry and arrogant. Their dead brothers and sisters can convince them for only so long. Good luck."
Klaszin nodded and then stepped through the portal.
He now stood in a vast throne room, an entire wall open to the air with a view of a vast city beyond. The entire city was nestled between the peaks of two mountains. Atop the taller of the two peaks was a massive, golden temple. Klaszin was familiar with the place, his tutors had taken care to instruct him on all of Humanity's God cities. This was Gon Jhian, capitol of the High Shelf. This was the seat of power for Gonchan. The heart of the land that worshiped him. Tithing their mana to him.
Commotion commenced shortly after Klaszin arrived. Dozens of bodies moved to intercept him as a shrill cry rose above the ruckus. "Intruder! Protect the King!"
Klaszin watched them come, curious. He had been to many different lands and he always found it curious how many things remained the same despite the distance between them. All reacted much the same way to unexpected events, treating every surprise as a threat. It wasn't an odd reaction, and the Kingsguard of Gon Jhian were to be commended for their discipline and speed. But it was still disappointing.
And a waste of mana.
"Stop!" Klaszin said, raising his hands. His fingers danced in front of him, directing streams of mana out. Within moments, the Kingsguard was subdued, the joints of their armor melded together. They tottered a few steps and then toppled over. It would take considerable time and access to a blacksmith to remove them from their makeshift prisons.
Grumbling, Klaszin turned to the King. He expected a man but found a boy, cowering atop an ornate, gold-encrusted throne. Klaszin frowned, "Where is your father?" He searched his memory for the name and found it buried in a dusty corner filled with history lessons from Scholar Hachin. "Yennis?"
The boy swallowed, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. "D-D-dead."
"Fine. You are?"
"King Flaharg."
It was a terrible name, but Klaszin saw little purpose in pointing it out. The new King had enough problems. Besides, Flaharg probably already knew.
"King Flaharg, I am here for Gonchan. I suggest you, and your troops, remain here."
His eyes widened, "Lord...Gonchan? He's returned? It's been so long."
A loud gong rang out from the temple above, reverberating through the valley, announcing the arrival of the God into his domain. Klaszin arched a brow and pointed in the direction of the temple. "I will make my way to him now." He began to make his away across the throne room toward a massive set of doors emblazoned with the symbol of a giant beast. It looked vaguely like a cross between a dragon and a cat. Gonchan.
Flaharg swallowed, "Who are you?" He moistened his lips. "What are you?"
Klaszin paused, "I am Godbreaker Klaszin."
"Godbreaker..." Flaharg repeated, trying to understand. But he would not, not until Klaszin had done what he had come here to do. There was no concept for a Godbreaker in Gon Jhian. There were only Gods. But they would learn soon enough.
Before Flaharg could say more, Klaszin was at the door. He pushed his palm out in front of him, and the doors slammed open, flying off their hinges and careening up the stairs beyond. He spared a brief glance back at the portal behind him and the thin stream of mana flowing through it. Members of retinue were making their way through the portal, their shields marked with the Godbreaker crest. They took up guard beside the portal, their faces grim.
Seeing no reason not to trust the matter to them, Klaszin reached to the smooth wall beside him. A hand of carved stone reached out of the wall and grasped his own hand. Moments later Klaszin was lifted up and then pulled along as the hand ascended the stairway. As much as he would like to float up the stairs, being dragged up by a wall hand was far more efficient. Perhaps, once he had access to more sources of mana, he could use it on luxuries.
Just before the top of the stairway the hand let him go, depositing him in front of a second set of massive doors. These two are subjected to the same treatment, blowing outward and off their hinges, slamming into the temple entryway beyond. Screams rang out as attendants fled his arrival.
Ahead, Klaszin could feel Gonchan stirring, awakening to his presence. Klaszin wished he could have simply opened a portal directly to the God, but it was too dangerous. Until the portal was well-fortified, it was easy to attack, just as Gonchan's portal was right now.
Klaszin could feel the gate in the room beyond the entryway. The God had left it open, but had not protected it. Klaszin wondered at the carelessness of Gods. Perhaps they had been too long unchallenged in their power to be anything other than thoughtless, but it still surprised him. Klaszin had already killed three lesser Gods, one would think that might create a reaction.
But preferences created patterns. Patterns settled into habits. Habits were difficult to root out.
Well, it was to Klaszin's advantage. He crouched down and two hands of polished marble reached up and lay ahold of his feet and ankles, yanking him forward and through the entryway. To either side loomed massive carved statues of Gonchan, the Keeper of Many Things. All these depicted was a mass of mouths, each open and waiting.
The doors ahead, towering and fortified, strained and then gave away at his approach. Klaszin was a Godbreaker, and barriers, regardless of their craft, would not keep him from his objective. As the doors swung inward, cracking on their hinges, they revealed the room beyond. It was an enormous space, dappled with ornate columns supporting a ceiling hundreds of feet above. The center of the chamber was dominated by a massive pool, bubbling and roiling from the heat of a hundred unseen furnaces below. All along the periphery of the room were shelves and display cases, holding precious gems, artifacts, and other treasures stolen from Humanity.
Klaszin took all of this in but remained focused on the pool. He could feel the portal between worlds deep below, obscured by the waters. He could also sense Gonchan, squirming its way toward the portal.
"Coward!" Klaszin snarled. The marble hands pulled him across the floor and to the pool. He peered down into the clouded depths, pulling mana from his thread to aid his perception. The portal was distant, but not unreachable. Traveling to it through the boiling water would be dangerous, but possible. It was unlikely to make a difference, Gonchan was faster and closer to the portal. Klaszin would not reach it in time.
The Godbreaker frowned, frustrated, as he considered unappealing options.
He would not get another chance at this. This was the time to act. Even if it came at a terrible cost, removing Gonchan from the pantheon would be worth it. Klaszin focused and called a much greater thread of mana through the portal. The torrent rushed into him, coursing through his body and setting his veins on fire. His eyes flared blue, crackles of energy sizzling at the corners. He knelt down, pressing both palms flat against the marble bordering the pool. He could feel the great slabs of it reaching deep into the ground beneath the temple, cradling the pool.
Mana began to flow into those slabs, concentrating on unseen fissures. Precious seconds trickled by before a groan rattled through the temple as the slabs began to crack, releasing the water from the pool through a thousand holes. Steam rose off the roiling water as it swirled away, and Kalszin leapt in, following it down into the rapidly draining cistern.
Klaszin could see portions of Gonchan's massive form appear from the pool as the great beast was tossed around by the rapidly receding water, drawn away from the portal it so desperately sought to reach. Klaszin had studied each of the Gods, but seeing them in person always cemented the nature of his task -- each God was a being of terrible beauty. Gonchan was no different.
According to his scholars, Gonchan was a Hydratic Leviathan. A creature of immense size, far beyond those populating Earth, its natural habitat was the boiling oceans of its own world. It feasted upon almost anything it could reach with its many gaping maws, though it took particular pleasure in objects of worth, particularly those vested with magical properties. The vast shelves in the temple chamber were priceless by any measure but in this place they were reduced to morsel for the God to dine upon at its leisure.
The water continued to drain away, bringing more of Gonchan in the view. Steam billowed in great gouts around it, but Klaszin could see the beast well enough. The center of its mass was an enormous body, mottled brown and oblong. Long, dragging tentacles emerged from it, interspersed with writhing serpentine necks capped with mouths ringed with rows of gnashing teach. On the body itself, a dozen oozing unblinking eyes stared outward at Klaszin as he approached.
[Who are you to stand before a GOD?]
The words rang out in Klaszin, drowning out his thoughts and pushing a compulsion on him to kneel. It was not the first time Klaszin had to contend with God Speak, but it still frayed his nerves. His opened eye saw it for what it was -- a forceful but intricate application of mana -- and pushed the compulsion aside.
Klaszin would not bow before a God.
"I am the Godbreaker," he replied. He brought his hands up into a steeple before him, gathering a mana blade in the small space between them. Then he drew his left hand downward, pulling the now formed blade along with it. It extended outward from his hand by few feet, a shimmering blue pane of energy. He raised his hand beside his head and then swiped it down in a chopping motion. The blue pane of energy released on the downward swing and flew through the air, meeting the fleshy neck of one of the mouths and severing it.
The God squealed, black ichor spraying from the severed mouth.
"You should not have come Gonchan. This is not your world. It is ours." Another blade slashed outward, severing a grasping tentacle in the process of trying to drag Gonchan along the floor of the cistern and toward the portal on the other side. "I am your end."
[I will feast upon you.]
A great gnashing of maws followed the words as multiple heads dove toward Klaszin. Marble hands reached up and lay ahold of Klaszin's feet once again and he slid along the cistern floor in a half crouch, occasionally leaping over the drainage holes he had created earlier. As the mouths darted forward, they were dealt with, the mana blade slicing through each, severing in some cases or carving off great heaps of flesh in others.
Severed heads began to reform, two maws emerging from the oozing stump. With each additional set of mouths, the corpus of the main body shrank slightly, providing substance to form the heads. An ocrean of mana flowed through the God as it sustained its attack. The assault was brutal but simple. Gonchan was a beast and followed its natural tendencies. These were understandable and exploitable.
Klaszin slowly circled the cistern, defending against the head and tentacles as he made his way to the portal. Unlike his own, it was a massive aperture easily a few hundred feet in diameter. As a gate between worlds, Klaszin could not peer beyond its surface, but he could feel the connection to the place beyond. Klaszin wished dearly to move through the portal and wreak vengeance on the world beyond just as Gonchan had done here, but it was not possible. His thread of mana could not follow him there.
All he could do was punish Gonchan for coming here.
Klaszin began to tear at the unprotected edges of the portal, collapsing the rent in the fabric and helping the tear to mend. Gonchan began to emit a keening wail as the portal began to fragment and dissolve. Klaszin had little concept of how Gods formed these portals but he knew creating one was no simple thing even for the Gods. Once lost, they became stranded in this world. Captured.
Klaszin studied Gonchan. Much of its massive body had been fed into new maws. Hundreds of them now swarmed about snapping futilely at Klaszin, who stood beyond their reach.
[FEAST!]
[FEAST!]
[FEAST!]
Gonchan screamed in his mind. Klaszin could feel the rage and hunger in the God. He could also sense the fear. Without the waters, it was growing cold and lethargic. With the new heads it was draining its energy far faster than normal. It needed food. It needed to escape this cold, miserable place.
It would not.
While the heads and tentacles flailed and writhed, Klaszin gathered pushed mana through his body once again, slowly shaping a ball of energy before him. It took some time to form, it was no simple thing to construct a weapon capable of killing a God. Once the ball had reached a sufficient size he began to draw it out, pushing energy into an infinitesimally small point of energy and then flaring out from there into a spearhead.
By the time he was done the mana spear was over two dozen feet long with massive rivulets of power coursing along its length. Dimly, Klaszin could sense the draining tank of mana back through the portal and regretted the cost of the weapon.
But there was nothing to be done.
God hunting was a terribly expensive business.
Klaszin began to feed mana into the propulsion apparatus at the tail of the spear, loading it with enough energy to travel to and through the God. Only when he was absolutely certain he had done enough to complete the task at hand did he release it.
The mana spear shot through the space between him and Gonchan, leaving a brilliant brue streaking afterimage in Klaszin's eyes. It pierced the great corpus of the God and disappeared in, leaving charred flesh at the entrypoint. Moments later Gonchan's body began to pulse blue and white as destructive fire lanced through it, traveling up the necks of the maws and then spraying outward as it was burned from within.
Within moments, the God shuddered and then was dead.
Klaszin stared at the beast, hating it. Centuries had passed with Gonchan weighing upon this land. Countless lives and treasures had disappeared into that being, only for it to demand more. It was the Keeper of Many Things, and it had taken all of them. There was no regaining what had been lost. The mana had been consumed or stored in the world beyond. It would take time for the people of this land to recover.
He let out a long sigh.
Marble hands reached up and lay hold of his feet, pushing him up the cistern and away from the great body of the dead God. Another gone, but so many still remained. Twenty-seven. Less and Greater.
Resjin with Many Hands
Nightstealer.
Onima.
They were all out there, taking from Humanity.
And Klaszin the Godbreaker would kill them all.
Want MOAR peril?
PerilousPlatypus

Context: I recounted my previous encounter in a Swiftie subreddit (this was before Porter revealed himself to be Taylor Swift, so I never posted it here). But I never thought I would get to see her in-person again…
I was once again inspired by Taylor’s jet usage, so this time, I flew to Boston to catch up with some friends over the weekend and back (but I fly commercial, so the carbon footprint is minimal 😤). During the flight back, I was reading some research papers on using LLMs for hacking (hopefully to disrupt the Tortured Poets’ supply chain), listening to “Knock Yourself Out XD” by Porter Robinson, when a WeChat notification popped up that caught my attention.
“Hey babe”
It was Taylor! We exchanged WeChat a few months back during our fateful encounter in the Californian skies. I never expected her to ever use it to text me, though, so I was still pretty surprised. Still, I couldn’t help but be doubtful. Taylor is a billionaire with a following of hundreds of millions, why would she text me, of all people? It felt like a scam—maybe she was about to ask me for a $100 Amazon gift voucher to fund her next album…
“How do I know you are really taylor?” I texted back
“Open your window <3”
My window shades were closed, so I haven’t been looking outside. I pulled them up, and was momentarily blinded by the glare. As my eyes regained focus, I made out a sight similar to what I saw a few months back: a Falcon 7x somehow clipped onto the wings of our Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9. Taylor was smiling at me, waving furiously behind her tiny round private jet window. I looked at my WeChat again, she told me to come out. I looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed what was going on outside; they were all either asleep or glued to the movie screen in front of them. I thought back to last time, when Taylor’s presence nearly caused a deadly fan-crazed stampede through the emergency exit. I didn’t want it to happen again. How do I get out without causing a fuss?
As if she read my mind, a message popped up: “Don’t worry, I got this UwU”.
As if coincidentally, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant came to my seat and asked me to follow her. She guided me to the emergency exit, and pressed a button on what seemed to be a small remote control in her hand. Without warning, the emergency door blew off, opening the way for me to once again walk out onto the wing. I got out. Taylor was already standing out there, waiting for me.
“Taylor… about last time…”
Without a second’s warning, a slap streaked across my left cheek.
I looked at her, confused. She was no longer smiling.
She was furious about my April Fools’ prank where I had pretended to be a Swiftie. I was surprised she even knew about this because I only did the prank with my friends, but I guess Taylor has her own intelligence network… “Was it all a lie!? Was none of it real!? I thought you would be different, but in the end, you are just another hater,” she accused. I struggled for words, and tried to convince her that I was but an anti-fan, not a hater, but to no avail.
“I appreciate your music, but the carbon emissions—”
“OHHH, so that is what it’s about, carbon emissions!” She shrieked. She went on a long rant about her heartbreak, covering her whole discography of exes —an Era’s Tour’s worth of tragedy—but with emphasis on the stories behind her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department. A Swiftie would kill to listen to such a detailed rundown of lyrics by the Mother herself, but I still struggled to see how any of it was related to her jet usage. After 10 or so minutes, she broke down and wept. I had to cast aside my disagreement and disapproval to comfort her, “It’s ok… it’s ok…”
After Taylor calmed down, and as the time for us to once again part ways neared, I asked Taylor what she thought about Porter Robinson claiming to be her. She stopped, and gave a deep anime-villainess laugh that was very uncharacteristic of her.
“Ah… what a fool you are…” and with one last smirk on her blood red lips, she peeled off her face like a rubber mask (similar to how Orochimaru does it) to reveal her true identity—Porter Robinson himself.
“You were thought it was Taylor Swift, but it was me, Dio!“
I fell to my knees, overwhelmed with a torrent of thoughts and emotions. I have completely lost touch with reality… I no longer knew what to believe, or who to believe…And yet… there were so many things I wanted to say to my idol, who was now towering before me… how I listened to “Shelter” and “Sad Machine” on repeat 10 years ago as a closeted weeb… how “Trying To Feel Alive” and “Something Comforting” gave my life meaning during the darkest of times… but also how betrayed I felt realizing that Porter was behind the wasteful tons of carbon emissions all along.
“Potaru-sama… boku wa… boku wa…” I stammered in broken JLPT N5 Japanese.
“Shut up, weeb” said Porter cooly. He snapped his fingers, and the grey wall paint of the Falcon 7x melted off to reveal a bright pink wallpaper of lolis, furries, and anime mascots of the man himself. Speakers hidden in the private jet’s engines blared a 170 BPM hardstyle remix of Hatsune Miku J-core.
“So long, weeb” he said, as he got back into his now transformed private jet. I was still on my knees, overwhelmed and speechless, as the Falcon 7x took off and the Vocaloid sound of Hatsune Miku faded into the distance…
At least I have Porter Robinson’s personal WeChat now.

Some of you might remember my previous post where I had a fateful encounter with the Mother herself. I never thought I would get to see her in person again…
I was once again inspired by Taylor’s jet usage, so this time, I flew to Boston to catch up with some friends over the weekend and back (but I fly commercial, so the carbon footprint is minimal 😤). During the flight back, I was reading some research papers on using LLMs for hacking (hopefully to disrupt the Tortured Poets’ supply chain), listening to “Knock Yourself Out XD” by Porter Robinson, when a WeChat notification popped up that caught my attention.
“Hey babe”
It was Taylor! We exchanged WeChat a few months back during our fateful encounter in the Californian skies. I never expected her to ever use it to text me, though, so I was still pretty surprised. Still, I couldn’t help but be doubtful. Taylor is a billionaire with a following of hundreds of millions, why would she text me, of all people? It felt like a scam—maybe she was about to ask me for a $100 Amazon gift voucher to fund her next album…
“How do I know you are really taylor?” I texted back
“Open your window <3”
My window shades were closed, so I haven’t been looking outside. I pulled them up, and was momentarily blinded by the glare. As my eyes regained focus, I made out a sight similar to what I saw a few months back: a Falcon 7x somehow clipped onto the wings of our Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9. Taylor was smiling at me, waving furiously behind her tiny round private jet window. I looked at my WeChat again, she told me to come out. I looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed what was going on outside; they were all either asleep or glued to the movie screen in front of them. I thought back to last time, when Taylor’s presence nearly caused a deadly fan-crazed stampede through the emergency exit. I didn’t want it to happen again. How do I get out without causing a fuss?
As if she read my mind, a message popped up: “Don’t worry, I got this UwU”.
As if coincidentally, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant came to my seat and asked me to follow her. She guided me to the emergency exit, and pressed a button on what seemed to be a small remote control in her hand. Without warning, the emergency door blew off, opening the way for me to once again walk out onto the wing. I got out. Taylor was already standing out there, waiting for me.
“Taylor… about last time…”
Without a second’s warning, a slap streaked across my left cheek.
I looked at her, confused. She was no longer smiling.
She was furious about my April Fools’ prank where I had pretended to be a Swiftie. I was surprised she even knew about it, given that I only played that prank with my friends, but it seems she has her ways to get intel. “Was it all a lie!? Was none of it real!? I thought you would be different, but in the end, you are just another hater,” she accused. I struggled for words, and tried to convince her that I was but an anti-fan, not a hater, but to no avail.
“I appreciate your music, but the carbon emissions—”
“OHHH, so that is what it’s about, carbon emissions!” She shrieked. She went on a long rant about her heartbreak, covering her whole discography of exes —an Era’s Tour’s worth of tragedy—but with emphasis on the stories behind her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department. A Swiftie would kill to listen to such a detailed rundown of lyrics by the Mother herself, but I still struggled to see how any of it was related to her jet usage. After 10 or so minutes, she broke down and wept. I had to cast aside my disagreement and disapproval to comfort her, “It’s ok… it’s ok…”
After Taylor calmed down, and as the time for us to once again part ways neared, I asked Taylor what she thought about Porter Robinson claiming to be her. She stopped, and gave a deep anime-villainess laugh that was very uncharacteristic of her.
“Ah… what a fool you are…” and with one last smirk on her blood red lips, she peeled off her face like a rubber mask (similar to how Orochimaru does it) to reveal her true identity—Porter Robinson himself.
“You were thought it was Taylor Swift, but it was me, Dio!“
I fell to my knees, overwhelmed with a torrent of thoughts and emotions. I have completely lost touch with reality… I no longer knew what to believe, or who to believe…And yet… there were so many things I wanted to say to my idol, who was now towering before me… how I listened to “Shelter” and “Sad Machine” on repeat 10 years ago as a closeted weeb… how “Trying To Feel Alive” and “Something Comforting” gave my life meaning during the darkest of times… but also how betrayed I felt realizing that Porter was behind the wasteful tons of carbon emissions all along.
“Potaru-sama… boku wa… boku wa…” I stammered in broken JLPT N5 Japanese.
“Shut up, weeb” said Porter cooly. He snapped his fingers, and the grey wall paint of the Falcon 7x melted off to reveal a bright pink wallpaper of lolis, furries, and anime mascots of the man himself. Speakers hidden in the private jet’s engines blared a 170 BPM hardstyle remix of Hatsune Miku J-core.
“So long, weeb” he said, as he got back into his now transformed private jet. I was still on my knees, overwhelmed and speechless, as the Falcon 7x took off and the Vocaloid sound of Hatsune Miku faded into the distance…
At least I have Porter Robinson’s personal WeChat now.

Ryo Saeba

(Alternate Header Image 1 2)

"You pulled off a shrewd plan, I applaud you for that. But you made one mistake. You showed me the tears of a woman. And now you have to pay the price for it."

Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerillas would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about fighting, weapons, and warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld. Partnering with Mick Angel, another sweeper and one of his best friends, Ryo formed the team known as City Hunter.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to Japan, the country of his birth, where he kept the City Hunter name for himself and continued doing sweeper work with a new partner, ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.
Note:

• Surprisingly, City Hunter was never given a full official English translation until early 2022. While chapters have been releasing steadily since then, only Chapters 1-38 are actually translated. This thread uses all available pages of the official translation, but afterwards will be forced to rely on fan-translations.
• Kaori hitting Ryo in the head with hammers whenever he acts pervy is a running gag throughout the series, which results in some of his better durability feats. While it may seem best to write these off as gag feats, there's plenty of evidence to suggest these feats are actual aspects of the City Hunter world and should be taken literally.
  • The hammers are acknowledged by unrelated bystanders as too heavy to lift^Ch99
  • A hammer plays an integral part of a serious scene, with it's handle being destroyed leading into the villains kidnapping Kaori^Ch120
  • Kaori literally destroys their bath to prevent Ryo from getting intimate with a woman which affects the plot of that chapter^Ch145
  • Kaori is legitimately strong in her own right so these feats aren't unprecedented^Ch187
• The most notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Striking
Vs Enemies

• Knocks out a biker far larger than him with a single punch to the stomach^Ch8
• Knocks out three Yakuza members with a camera^Ch45
• Incapacitates a large biker gang, including a member who was twice as tall as the others^Ch75
• Sends a large man flying down an alley and later knocks that same man out of a window^Ch121

Destructive Output

• Breaks a baton and sends a mob member far larger than him flying back^Ch6
• Smashes through a wall with a wooden mallet^Ch69
• Sends a man far larger than him flying back, destroying the set of a dance recital^Ch71
• Knocks a pair of thugs through a wooden door^Ch166
• Defeats a group of mercenaries offscreen, one of which was shown to have had his head smashed into a small crater in the ground^Ch174
• Kicks down a metal gate after shooting the lock^Ch175

Lifting/Throwing

• Lifts a student off the ground, smashing his head through the ceiling of the lecture hall and leaving a sizeable hole^Ch15
• Isn't slowed down at all as he carries his ally while fleeing a torrent of bullets^Ch21
• Catches one of Kaori's hammer swings^Ch47
  • The majority of Kaori's best hammer feats can be found in the Durability section for scaling
• Catches a punch from behind and throws the attacker hard enough to knock over some tombstones^Ch81
• Throws a knife hard enough to embed it in a wall^Ch95
• Stands up while a giant spikey metal ball is tied to his back^Ch162

Jumping/Charging

• Leaps through the ceiling of his apartment in terror^Ch65
• Dives with enough force to smash his head through a stone wall^Ch94
• While tied to a giant spikey metal ball, he lifts it up and uses it to crash through a wall and stop the man that was attacking his client^Ch162

Other

• Uses garrote wire to decapitate a man^Ch4
• Digs his fingers and toes into stone to avoid falling into a spike trap^Ch53
• Bites through the tip of a spear^Ch93
• Flicks a pachinko ball hard enough that it knocks a knife out of a thug's hand which is embedded in the handle of a wheelchair^Ch102
• [Anti-Feat] Was unable to free himself after getting his dick trapped in the doors of a train^Ch104
• Bites and stabs his toes into a stone wall so that he could climb it despite being tied up^Ch109
• Easily catches the stab and breaks the wrist of a serial killer^Ch131

Speed

Travel

• After killing a suicide bomber he charges a short distance to knock him away before his body can fall to the ground^Ch5
• Pushes a woman out of the way of a speeding truck and then proceeds to briefly outrun that truck^Ch14
• In the time that it took a thug to enter a building and break into a girl's appartment, Ryo traveled all the way there from his appartment (the exact distance is unclear, but the reflection of the girl's telescope appears to be at least several blocks away)^Ch102
• While bra-lusted, he runs straight through a mine field and emerges unharmed^Ch154
• Instantly crosses a large warehouse to where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Reactions
Melee

• Sidesteps a biker's punch^Ch8
• Grabs someone so that they take a bat to the face for him when the swing was mere inches from his head^Ch35
• Easily dodges and catches a serial killer's stab^Ch130
• Ryo narrowly avoided Mick Angel's attacks after he had been injected with Angel Dust^Ch182
  • Angel dust increases muscular power beyond its limits^Ch184

Aim Dodging

• Leans back and narrowly avoids a point blank pistol shot from Miki, an ex-mercenary^Ch86
  • He later jumps around a store so that she was unable to land a shot on him^Ch86
• After Miki hypnotized herself to shoot him immediately after he said a certain key word, he was narrowly able to react in time to knock aside her gun^Ch88
• Avoids Koumori's aim long enough to get thrown his own gun and retaliate (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• Narrowly avoids Umibozu's shots at various points throughout their duel^Ch148
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
  • Umibozu is an incredible shot in his own right, hitting numerous perfect shots while blindfolded^Ch145
• Jumps to avoid nearly point blank machine gun fire from a professional assassin called the Black Lizard^Ch153
• Engages in a gunfight with Mick Angel, during which he climbed the outside of his building without getting hit^Ch175
  • Mick claims to be the number one sweeper in America and Umibozu corroborates this, saying that Mick is likely Ryo's equal in skill^Ch175
• Avoids the fire of several well trained soldiers at once^Ch191

Projectiles

• Moves Kaori out of the way of some thrown daggers^Ch6
• Dodges and reacts to various thrown, metal-edged playing cards^Ch23
• Reacts to a revolver round, moving his erection an instant before it was blasted off^Ch53
  • This comes with the caveat that Ryo already knew Umibozu was watching him to make sure he didn't act up, and he realized his mistake before the shot was fired^Ch53
• Catches a thrown knife with his teeth^Ch90
• Seemingly deflect trap arrows while sprinting down a booby trapped hallway^Ch93
• Chops two trap spears that were launched at him to the ground^Ch154
• Shoots through a knife after it was thrown at him^Ch162
• Narrowly reacts to darts fired from a mechanism on Mick's wrist^Ch188

Other

• Protects himself with a table before a grenade can explode in his face^Ch112
• After triggering a car bomb it's revealed that he managed to avoid it^Ch167

Combat/Attacking

• When a drugged up opponent attacks him from behind, Ryo draws his gun and shoots him to the ground and, by the time he staggered to his feet, had already moved behind him to strangle him^Ch4
• Leaps high into the air, moving fast enough to seemingly vanish to his attackers^Ch8
• Repeatedly stabs the space between his fingers at high speeds without cutting himself^Ch10
• Moves faster than a soldier can track, appearing behind her after dodging her punch^Ch20
• Even while his opponent has a gun trained on him, Ryo throws a bra over his eyes and scampers into the ceiling before he can recover^Ch21
  • This man could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch20
• Flicks a series of pachinko balls at some thugs at high speeds^Ch46
• Steals Reika's bra off her person before she can realize what happened^Ch59
• Beats up a group of Yakuza in a few seconds^Ch72
• When a disguised police detective has a gun trained on him, Ryo grabs and throws a scalpel into his hand before he can pull the trigger^Ch103

Quickdraw/Shooting

• Has multiple examples of shooting opponents who were already aiming at him
  • High ranking mob member^Ch6
  • Foreign prince that could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch21/20
  • Professional killer^Ch119
  • A well trained soldier^Ch190
• Quickdraws a shotgun to destroy his attacker's whip mid-swing^Ch9
• Using a mounted machine gun, he takes out a squad of terrorists before any of them could fire a single shot back^Ch19
• Beats his opponent in a quickdraw even after giving him a head start (this opponent also claimed to be more skilled than ordinary soldiers)^Ch19
• Quickdraws and fires before a Yakuza hitman had even grabbed his weapon, moving so fast that the hitman didn't believe him to be human^Ch23
• Notices a series of scalpels falling from the sky and shoots them out of the air before they can hit his client^Ch38
• Uses his gun to disarm six thugs in a split second before any of them could pull their triggers despite having their guns trained on him and then immediately does it again^Ch76
• Beats a hitman in a quickdraw, disarming him and destroying his belt to drop his pants before he realized what happened^Ch90
• Defeats Koumori, not just in a quickdraw but actually managing to hit him in the face with his gun before the other man pulled his trigger (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• While Umibozu had his gun trained on him, Ryo managed to pull his gun and fire in the same time it took Umibozu to only pull his trigger^Ch149
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
• Shoots multiple hidden explosives in an instant^Ch159

Agility/Mobility

Acrobatics

• Vaults over a countertop and tackles a cashier to the ground to avoid a torrent of gunfire^Ch30
• Flips out of the way of an incoming truck from a seated position^Ch74
• Performs several back handsprings to distance himself from an explosion^Ch154

Jumping

• Leaps from a stage and gets tangled in the lights^Ch68
• Repeatedly jumping across a street while traversing rooftops without any sleep the night before^Ch94
• [NSFW] After falling from a rooftop, he leaps back up to retaliate against his opponent^Ch95
• Leaps up to a second story platform where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Climbing

• Rapidly scales the side of a building^Ch94
• Performs pullups by sticking his fingers into holes in the ceiling^Ch102
• Clings to the side of a window^Ch102
• Climbs down a wall like Spider-Man^Ch109
  • He has done this on several occasions^Ch173
• Scales the outside of his building during a gunfight^Ch175

Hanging

• Dangles from a rope by his feet like a spider^Ch68
• Clings to a windowsill by his toes^Ch98

Propping/Wedging

• Props himself in the top corner of a room^Ch65
• Wedges himself between two ceiling rafters^Ch82
• Hides from Kaori by going into an alley and propping himself high between two buildings^Ch102
• [NSFW] Props himself between the wall and ceiling of a shower at an impossible angle^Ch161

Other

• Drops onto a moving car from a tree branch, maintaining his balance with apparent ease even when the car crashes into a light pole^Ch16
• Uses a rope to swing onto a stage and save an idol from a rabid mob^Ch24
• Runs along walls while avoiding booby traps^Ch93
• Saves a man from a collapsing floor^Ch114

Durability

Blunt

• Kaori embeds him into the ground and then smashes his head through the side of a building^Ch52
• Gets sent flying through a door and embedded in a wall^Ch68
• Kaori hits him hard enough to make a crater bigger than he is^Ch78
• Kaori smashes an entire bed over his head, partially sending him through his apartment's floor^Ch79
• Kaori knocks him through the wall of a bathhouse and he isn't bothered at all^Ch85
• Umibozu slams him into a wall hard enough to crater it and he immediately recovered^Ch87
• Takes blows from Umibozu on multiple different ocassions, with Umibozu being strong enough to crush the top of a car and and split a wooden table in half with his strikes^{Ch147/90/55/146}
• Immediately gets up after Kaori smashes him into the pavement^Ch104
• Umibozu rips a lamp post from the ground and throws it at Ryo's face hard enough to bend it^Ch146
• Kaori knocks him through a stone wall^Ch151
• Kaori craters him into the roof of their building^Ch175

Piercing

• Getting swarmed by piranhas and has no visible damage after^Ch112
• Gets slammed by a giant spiked ball trap with no visible puncture wound afterwards^Ch151

Explosive

• Gets caught in a trap where multiple grenades and dynamite packs explode on top of him, blasting a hole in the side of his apartment building^Ch87
  • Here is the destruction from that blast from several other angles^Ch88
• Is hit with a pointblank explosion that destroys a wall in his appartment^Ch102
• Repeatedly shoots through a plane from the inside, causing it to blowup so he can escape^Ch119

Falling

• Jumps from his apartment and crashes onto a car below, heavily denting the top of it without injury^Ch32
  • We see in a later chapter that Ryo lives on the fifth floor^Ch67
• Gets dropped from the fourth floor of a hospital, crashing into the pavement and forming a fairly large crater^Ch38
• [NSFW] Falls from a rooftop and craters into the street^Ch93

Electrical

• Kaori electrocutes him twice with a defibrillator and he immediately gets up (though the third time causes his heart to stop)^Ch47
  • Afterwards he was revealed to have been temporarily crippled by the attacks^Ch47
• A door trap electrocutes him and soon after the same thing happens when he touches barred windows^Ch53

Endurance/Survivability

• Saeko kicks him in the face with heels, puncturing his forehead^Ch19
• Has sex with forty women over the course of two weeks, leaving him visibly drained but still able to continue^Ch21
• Capable of fighting effectively even with a broken leg^Ch38
• Gets flattened and pops back into shape^Ch69
• Kaori hits him with a spikey metal ball and a spike goes straight through his head^Ch97
• Drank extensively for two days straight without sleep and was still able to operate at normal efficiency^Ch159

Other

• Gets trampled by a crowd of rabid idol fans that had previously burst through several walls^Ch24
• Gets crushed under a large weight^Ch67
• His Super Mokkori pushes him up against concrete with enough force to crack it^Ch86
• Is standing on the roof of a several story tall abandoned building when Kaori accidentally triggers the explosives she'd filled it with, causing the building to collapse and he survives^Ch175
• Pray for his recovery...^Ch185
  • Oh god not again...^Ch185
• After getting injected with a tranquilizer, he was able to defend a surgeon immediately after, claiming a Yakuza's animosity negated the tranquilizer's effects^Ch186

Cock

Yes, you read that right. Ryo's penis, his erection, his boner, his mokkori. It's frankly capable of some pretty incredible things and seems to have stats that are completely independent of Ryo's other physical abilities. So much so that it's probably best to have an entire section of the thread dedicated to it. I'm not sorry.
Physicals
Strength/Growing Power

• Bursts through bullet proof glass^Ch21
• [NSFW] Supports a 100kg weight^Ch28
• After getting placed in a steel chastity belt, Ryo eventually gets a boner so strong that it breaks through^Ch32
  • Though this does leave him in a... rough state^Ch32
• Bursts straight through a wall (though he was unable to free himself afterwards)^Ch40
• Traps Ryo's head between it and the roof of a car like a vice^Ch46
• Knocks a door off its hinges^Ch73
• Pushes against a store's wooden support beams with enough force to crack concrete and eventually destroy several of the wooden beams^Ch86

Speed

• Moves to avoid a bullet from a revolver when is was an inch away from hitting him^Ch53

Durability

• [NSFW] Is electrocuted when it touches a mannequin that had been attached to an electrical outlet, and after the initial shock Ryo recovered mostly fine^Ch24
• Withstands getting smashed through a wall twice^Ch45
• Caves in Ryo's face when his head is slammed into it by Kaori, implying its durability is higher than that of Ryo himself^Ch48
• A rapist breaks his ankle trying to kick it^Ch48
• [NSFW][Anti-Feat] Gets trapped in the door of a train^Ch104
  • This was revealed to have seriously injured him^Ch104

Abilities
Detecting Women

• His boner let him detect that his assailant was a pretty woman even when he couldn't see them in the dark^Ch12
• Ryo acts up after accidentally walking in on his client who had disguised herself as a man, despite not actually seeing through the disguise himself^Ch77
• [NSFW] Acts as a "beauty detector" to lead him towards beautiful women, but it has been fooled by dirty magazines before^Ch104

Other

• Even if you don't use your eyes Ryo is canonically packing heat^Ch38
• I just... I... uhhh...^Ch45
• Can repeatedly retract it at will and at a moment's notice^Ch45
• [Anti-Feat] Seeing a princess in a leotard did nothing for him, with Ryo describing it as if she has an aura that blocks his horny power^Ch65
  • He later describes this aura as "the repulsion of a girl who didn't know what love was", which disappeared when the princess began to fall for him^Ch65
  • The princess' handler later describes it a "noble aura" that not even Ryo can break through^Ch65

Intelligence

General Knowledge
World Knowledge

• Claims to have every criminal case from the last ten years memorized^Ch10
• Does heavy background checks and memorizes information on women people he's working with^Ch60
• When a woman describes how her sister was shot during a fight between Yakuza, Ryo was already familiar with the situation^Ch102

Weapon/Chemical Knowledge

• Recognized the scent of chloroform in a room despite it being ventilated from it's earlier use^Ch41/40
• Disarms a car bomb^Ch51
• Immediately recognizes an old scar as a bullet wound^Ch102
• Disarms a bomb^Ch119
• When a fire alarm is set off, he quickly recognizes that the smoke is closer to that of a smoke bomb than an ordinary fire^Ch136

Deduction

• Recognizes that his assailant was using old guerilla warfare tactics and that he was about to be driven directly into a minefield^Ch12
• Determines that a room must have a secret passageway based on the kidnapper's rush^Ch41
• Figures out that a man was actually poisoned rather than dying of sickness just by looking at his picture^Ch92

Other

• Disables a mansion's alarms^Ch95
• Determines a woman's measurements with a glance^Ch104
• Tricks his client's uncle into revealing his true motivation for stopping her business^Ch109
• Managed to steal classified information from a police detective's computer using unknown means^Ch118
• Seemingly capable of basic lockpicking (though he may have just kicked the door down)^Ch132

Planning

• Lures a serial killer into attacking him in his room, only for it to be revealed that he had placed a mannequin under his covers while he was hiding under the bed itself, which also allowed his ally to get a glimpse of the mystery killer's face^Ch2
• When a mob boss believed he had led him into a trap, its revealed that Ryo had planned for it, stuffing his car's tailpipe with nails to shred through the enemy force and stealing an armored truck full of drug money^Ch6
• Came up with a plan to fake a man's death by literally shooting him, wounding him to the point where he could still escape before his body was supposedly destroyed in a car explosion^Ch10
  • While the escape route was partially ruined by Ryo's assistants, he managed to stall the man they were trying to fool long enough for the plan to be successful anyway^Ch10
• Impersonates a sergeant so that he can slip a sleeping agent into her entire squad's dinner, then proceeds to impersonate the man their squad was working for and order that they quickly eat their dinner, which leads to every guard being knocked out so that Ryo could engage with the boss unimpeded^Ch20
• Intentionally chose his apartment because there is only one location someone could potentially snipe him from that was over a kilometer away, which allowed him to predict where a Yakuza sniper would set up^Ch60
• After the head of the police narcotics division admits to various crimes to a woman who he is about to eliminate, Ryo announces that it was all captured on a secret microphone he hid in the room^Ch61
• Knowing that his old partner was trying to kill him he used a mirror to trick her so that he could appear behind her^Ch113
• After briefly handling a thug's gun he's revealed to have placed a bug on it so that he will track down the woman Ryo was looking for for him^Ch121

Quick Thinking

• When a man takes a girl hostage in front of a large crowd, Ryo shoots through his own hand to slow the bullet down so that it takes out the assailant but doesn't break the glass behind him^Ch2
  • It's later confirmed that he made sure to avoid the bones in his hand, making this an accuracy feat as well^Ch2
• Uses the sparks from a bullet to briefly illuminate a pitch black room so that he could see his target^Ch3
• After noticing that he was surrounded by a group of Yakuza, he goads a massive man into attacking them so he and his client can make a quick getaway^Ch23
• In order to accomplish his mission of causing a truck to crash without revealing his identity as the City Hunter, he pretends to assault the woman he was with so that she would push him away, sending him tumbling towards the truck so he could clandestinely shoot its tires^Ch74

Mental Fortitude/Pain Resistance

• Doesn't react to the pain of shooting through his own hand^Ch2
• Resists the urge to emote after getting shot twice in the ass with arrows^Ch25
• Breaks his own leg to get himself admitted into a hospital^Ch38
  • Doesn't react after using that same broken leg to foil a hitman which was later said to have broken his leg even further^Ch38
• Bluffs that he swapped an assassin's hidden gun camera with an ordinary one, being so convincing that the assassin both surrendered and wet himself in fear^Ch51
• Was able to deny his urges when a sexy lady was flirting with him in order to keep up the appearance that he was engaged to his client so that her suitors would leave her alone^Ch106
• Doesn't hesitate when a bullet grazes his cheek, continuing his fight^Ch175

Gear

Firearms

• Colt .357 Magnum^Ch2
  • Has a second magnum he keeps in an ankle holster for if the first one runs out of ammo^Ch6
  • Comes with a scope for longer distance shots and a silencer which was effective enough that he didn't draw attention after firing in the middle of a crowd of people^Ch28/10
  • While it theoretically only holds six bullets he has fired more than that either without reloading or by seamlessly reloading between shots^Ch28
  • Strong enough to fire straight through a plane's exterior (also another example of firing more than six shots in rapid succession)^Ch119
  • Was modified by a legendary gunsmith to be more accurate^Ch124
  • Shots partially destroy various gravestones^Ch147
  • Fires straight through a stone wall into the opposite wall^Ch175
• .44 Magnum^Ch19
• .41 Magnum (he considers this to be a "one of a thousand" gun with far greater accuracy than other firearms)^Ch19
• M36 Revolver^Ch7
• M686 Revolver^Ch90
• Rifle^Ch1
• Pump-Action Shotgun^Ch6
• Machine Gun^Ch26
• Submachine Gun^Ch114
• Sniper rifle^Ch27

Ammo

• Full metal jacket bullets for his Colt Python that ricochet off of solid surfaces and produce sparks when they do^Ch3
• A golden .500 Nitro Express that Ryo claimed can move a 2 ton object a whole foot when fired from over 100 meters away, which when fired into a target's ear sticks to the inside of their skull without piercing through^Ch1
• A .30 M1 Carbine Jacket that fires and spins slowly enough that it can shoot through a man's stomach without damaging any internal organs, resulting in a wound rather than a fatal shot^Ch10
• Rubber bullets^Ch28

Other Long Ranged Weapons

• Bazooka^Ch37
  • Blasts large craters in the street^Ch37
  • Kaori later used one to blast sizeable holes in concrete^Ch114
• Twin RPGs^Ch191
• Crossbow with short arrows, making them impossible to pull out^Ch2
• Various throwing knives lining his inner coat^Ch11
• Pachinko balls which he can flick with pinpoint accuracy^Ch102

Melee Weapons

• Garrote wire^Ch4
• Hidden ankle blades^Ch5
• A glove with a metal attachment that gives a secondary blow to whoever he punches^Ch6
• Brass knuckles^Ch25
• A hidden knife in his belt buckle^Ch142

Explosives

• Nitroglycerine, which Ryo claims an entire spilled bottle would blow a pair of kidnappers to smitherines^Ch16
• Remote explosives which he uses to destroy a lab^Ch37
• Dynamite that when used repeatedly eventually resulted in a yakuza clan's headquarters to be completely leveled (the headquarters was a fairly tall building)^Ch84
• His partner Kaori has shown to pack grenades which she would've gotten from his armory^Ch168
  • This is true for flash bangs as well^Ch172

Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance

• Small microphones to bug targets^Ch6
• Police radio^Ch6
• Homing transmitter^Ch42
  • Ryo has dozens of them attached to people of interest around the city, all of which he can track using a device in his car^Ch80
  • Their signals are fairly weak, having a range of only one kilometer^Ch80
• Gear that allows him to listen in on Umibozu's phone call^Ch174

Chemicals

• A ring laced with fast acting poison^Ch5
• A fast acting sleeping pill which he stores in his tooth^Ch20
  • Says that someone he used it on would sleep "at least till tomorrow" (the time of day he used it is unclear but it would presumably be at least 12 hours)^Ch113
• His secret weapon PATCH-WORK PATTERN PANTALOONS (a pair of boxer briefs that are filled with packets of various chemicals, including anesthetics, truth serum, and sleeping agents)^Ch20
• Instant acting sleeping powder^Ch64

Other

• Bullet proof vest (along with fake blood packs to be extra convincing)^Ch6
• Ear plugs^Ch109
• Lighter^Ch142
• The inner lining of his coat is lined with a special chemical that, when burned, causes a massive cloud of tear gas to emit from it and the outer coat is packed with plastic explosives and a detonator^Ch142
  • He also keeps various weapons in the lining of his coat, such as a dismantled revolver, a miniature time bomb that he uses to blow up a criminal organization's ammo depot, and most importantly condoms^Ch141/142

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

Ryo Saeba

(Alternate Header Image 1 2)

"You pulled off a shrewd plan, I applaud you for that. But you made one mistake. You showed me the tears of a woman. And now you have to pay the price for it."

Anyone who has spent considerable time in Tokyo, or Japan as a whole for that matter, may have heard rumors about the blackboard in Shinjuku station. They say that if you have a problem and can't go to the police, all you have to do is write a note with the letters XYZ at the end and wait for the mysterious City Hunter to come and find you. However, pretty much anyone that's done this will tell you that the City Hunter isn't exactly the man you might expect.
At the incredibly young age of three years old, Ryo Saeba was traveling with his parents when their plane crashed in a country in Central America that was in the middle of a civil war. Being the sole survivor, Ryo wandered the jungle for days until he stumbled upon a village of guerilla fighters that were battling their country's government. The guerillas would only accept warriors that could fight with them, so Ryo joined their ranks in order to survive. They taught him everything they knew about fighting, weapons, and warfare until Ryo grew to be one of the most dangerous men on the battlefield. However, the government forces eventually overwhelmed them, chasing the guerillas out of the country. Now an adult, Ryo made his way to the United States and opted to become a sweeper, a mercenary/bounty hunteprivate detective that performs off the books jobs to clean up the filthy criminal underworld. Partnering with Mick Angel, another sweeper and one of his best friends, Ryo formed the team known as City Hunter.
At some point, Ryo left the US and returned to Japan, the country of his birth, where he kept the City Hunter name for himself and continued doing sweeper work with a new partner, ex-detective Hideyuki Makimura. Ryo's reputation spread rapidly, becoming known as one of the most dangerous men in the criminal underworld. So what's the problem? Well, he does have one weakness: Beautiful women. Despite his upbringing, Ryo is a goofy pervert and womanizer that would only accept jobs from the prettiest women around if he had his way. For awhile, he had Makimura to keep him in check, but his partner would meet a tragic end after refusing a job from a powerful drug syndicate, giving Ryo the dying request of looking after his little sister Kaori. Initially planning to help Kaori get out of the city, Ryo was surprised to find that Kaori wanted to take her brother's place as Ryo's assistant/partner and continue the work he thought was so important. Together, they became the newest iteration of City Hunter, sweeping the streets of Japan of evil and assisting any beautiful women that requested their services.
While his methods may be questionable, rest assured that the City Hunter always sees a job through no matter what criminal organizations, serial killers, or assassins stand in his way.
Note:

• Surprisingly, City Hunter was never given a full official English translation until early 2022. While chapters have been releasing steadily since then, this translation is still far from complete. This thread uses all available pages of the official translation, but afterwards will be forced to rely on fan-translations.
• Kaori hitting Ryo in the head with hammers whenever he acts pervy is a running gag throughout the series, which results in some of his better durability feats. While it may seem best to write these off as gag feats, there's plenty of evidence to suggest these feats are actual aspects of the City Hunter world and should be taken literally.
  • The hammers are acknowledged by unrelated bystanders as too heavy to lift^Ch99
  • A hammer plays an integral part of a serious scene, with it's handle being destroyed leading into the villains kidnapping Kaori^Ch120
  • Kaori literally destroys their bath to prevent Ryo from getting intimate with a woman which affects the plot of that chapter^Ch145
  • Kaori is legitimately strong in her own right so these feats aren't unprecedented^Ch187
• The most notable feats in each section will be bolded.

Strength

Striking
Vs Enemies

• Knocks out a biker far larger than him with a single punch to the stomach^Ch8
• Knocks out three Yakuza members with a camera^Ch45
• Incapacitates a large biker gang, including a member who was twice as tall as the others^Ch75
• Sends a large man flying down an alley and later knocks that same man out of a window^Ch121

Destructive Output

• Breaks a baton and sends a mob member far larger than him flying back^Ch6
• Smashes through a wall with a wooden mallet^Ch69
• Sends a man far larger than him flying back, destroying the set of a dance recital^Ch71
• Knocks a pair of thugs through a wooden door^Ch166
• Defeats a group of mercenaries offscreen, one of which was shown to have had his head smashed into a small crater in the ground^Ch174
• Kicks down a metal gate after shooting the lock^Ch175

Lifting/Throwing

• Lifts a student off the ground, smashing his head through the ceiling of the lecture hall and leaving a sizeable hole^Ch15
• Isn't slowed down at all as he carries his ally while fleeing a torrent of bullets^Ch21
• Catches one of Kaori's hammer swings^Ch47
  • The majority of Kaori's best hammer feats can be found in the Durability section for scaling
• Catches a punch from behind and throws the attacker hard enough to knock over some tombstones^Ch81
• Throws a knife hard enough to embed it in a wall^Ch95
• Stands up while a giant spikey metal ball is tied to his back^Ch162

Jumping/Charging

• Leaps through the ceiling of his apartment in terror^Ch65
• Dives with enough force to smash his head through a stone wall^Ch94
• While tied to a giant spikey metal ball, he lifts it up and uses it to crash through a wall and stop the man that was attacking his client^Ch162

Other

• Uses garrote wire to decapitate a man^Ch4
• Digs his fingers and toes into stone to avoid falling into a spike trap^Ch53
• Bites through the tip of a spear^Ch93
• Flicks a pachinko ball hard enough that it knocks a knife out of a thug's hand which is embedded in the handle of a wheelchair^Ch102
• [Anti-Feat] Was unable to free himself after getting his dick trapped in the doors of a train^Ch104
• Bites and stabs his toes into a stone wall so that he could climb it despite being tied up^Ch109
• Easily catches the stab and breaks the wrist of a serial killer^Ch131

Speed

Travel

• After killing a suicide bomber he charges a short distance to knock him away before his body can fall to the ground^Ch5
• Pushes a woman out of the way of a speeding truck and then proceeds to briefly outrun that truck^Ch14
• In the time that it took a thug to enter a building and break into a girl's appartment, Ryo traveled all the way there from his appartment (the exact distance is unclear, but the reflection of the girl's telescope appears to be at least several blocks away)^Ch102
• While bra-lusted, he runs straight through a mine field and emerges unharmed^Ch154
• Instantly crosses a large warehouse to where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Reactions
Melee

• Sidesteps a biker's punch^Ch8
• Grabs someone so that they take a bat to the face for him when the swing was mere inches from his head^Ch35
• Easily dodges and catches a serial killer's stab^Ch130
• Ryo narrowly avoided Mick Angel's attacks after he had been injected with Angel Dust^Ch182
  • Angel dust increases muscular power beyond its limits^Ch184

Aim Dodging

• Leans back and narrowly avoids a point blank pistol shot from Miki, an ex-mercenary^Ch86
  • He later jumps around a store so that she was unable to land a shot on him^Ch86
• After Miki hypnotized herself to shoot him immediately after he said a certain key word, he was narrowly able to react in time to knock aside her gun^Ch88
• Avoids Koumori's aim long enough to get thrown his own gun and retaliate (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• Narrowly avoids Umibozu's shots at various points throughout their duel^Ch148
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
  • Umibozu is an incredible shot in his own right, hitting numerous perfect shots while blindfolded^Ch145
• Jumps to avoid nearly point blank machine gun fire from a professional assassin called the Black Lizard^Ch153
• Engages in a gunfight with Mick Angel, during which he climbed the outside of his building without getting hit^Ch175
  • Mick claims to be the number one sweeper in America and Umibozu corroborates this, saying that Mick is likely Ryo's equal in skill^Ch175
• Avoids the fire of several well trained soldiers at once^Ch191

Projectiles

• Moves Kaori out of the way of some thrown daggers^Ch6
• Dodges and reacts to various thrown, metal-edged playing cards^Ch23
• Reacts to a revolver round, moving his erection an instant before it was blasted off^Ch53
  • This comes with the caveat that Ryo already knew Umibozu was watching him to make sure he didn't act up, and he realized his mistake before the shot was fired^Ch53
• Catches a thrown knife with his teeth^Ch90
• Seemingly deflect trap arrows while sprinting down a booby trapped hallway^Ch93
• Chops two trap spears that were launched at him to the ground^Ch154
• Shoots through a knife after it was thrown at him^Ch162
• Narrowly reacts to darts fired from a mechanism on Mick's wrist^Ch188

Other

• Protects himself with a table before a grenade can explode in his face^Ch112
• After triggering a car bomb it's revealed that he managed to avoid it^Ch167

Combat/Attacking

• When a drugged up opponent attacks him from behind, Ryo draws his gun and shoots him to the ground and, by the time he staggered to his feet, had already moved behind him to strangle him^Ch4
• Leaps high into the air, moving fast enough to seemingly vanish to his attackers^Ch8
• Repeatedly stabs the space between his fingers at high speeds without cutting himself^Ch10
• Moves faster than a soldier can track, appearing behind her after dodging her punch^Ch20
• Even while his opponent has a gun trained on him, Ryo throws a bra over his eyes and scampers into the ceiling before he can recover^Ch21
  • This man could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch20
• Flicks a series of pachinko balls at some thugs at high speeds^Ch46
• Steals Reika's bra off her person before she can realize what happened^Ch59
• Beats up a group of Yakuza in a few seconds^Ch72
• When a disguised police detective has a gun trained on him, Ryo grabs and throws a scalpel into his hand before he can pull the trigger^Ch103

Quickdraw/Shooting

• Has multiple examples of shooting opponents who were already aiming at him
  • High ranking mob member^Ch6
  • Foreign prince that could react fast enough to catch knives thrown from a short distance away^Ch21/20
  • Professional killer^Ch119
  • A well trained soldier^Ch190
• Quickdraws a shotgun to destroy his attacker's whip mid-swing^Ch9
• Using a mounted machine gun, he takes out a squad of terrorists before any of them could fire a single shot back^Ch19
• Beats his opponent in a quickdraw even after giving him a head start (this opponent also claimed to be more skilled than ordinary soldiers)^Ch19
• Quickdraws and fires before a Yakuza hitman had even grabbed his weapon, moving so fast that the hitman didn't believe him to be human^Ch23
• Notices a series of scalpels falling from the sky and shoots them out of the air before they can hit his client^Ch38
• Uses his gun to disarm six thugs in a split second before any of them could pull their triggers despite having their guns trained on him and then immediately does it again^Ch76
• Beats a hitman in a quickdraw, disarming him and destroying his belt to drop his pants before he realized what happened^Ch90
• Defeats Koumori, not just in a quickdraw but actually managing to hit him in the face with his gun before the other man pulled his trigger (Koumori is another professional hitman)^Ch124/118
• While Umibozu had his gun trained on him, Ryo managed to pull his gun and fire in the same time it took Umibozu to only pull his trigger^Ch149
  • Ryo previously described Umibozu as a sniper of the highest caliber and one of the most dangerous guys in the business^Ch53
• Shoots multiple hidden explosives in an instant^Ch159

Agility/Mobility

Acrobatics

• Vaults over a countertop and tackles a cashier to the ground to avoid a torrent of gunfire^Ch30
• Flips out of the way of an incoming truck from a seated position^Ch74
• Performs several back handsprings to distance himself from an explosion^Ch154

Jumping

• Leaps from a stage and gets tangled in the lights^Ch68
• Repeatedly jumping across a street while traversing rooftops without any sleep the night before^Ch94
• [NSFW] After falling from a rooftop, he leaps back up to retaliate against his opponent^Ch95
• Leaps up to a second story platform where his opponents were standing^Ch159

Climbing

• Rapidly scales the side of a building^Ch94
• Performs pullups by sticking his fingers into holes in the ceiling^Ch102
• Clings to the side of a window^Ch102
• Climbs down a wall like Spider-Man^Ch109
  • He has done this on several occasions^Ch173
• Scales the outside of his building during a gunfight^Ch175

Hanging

• Dangles from a rope by his feet like a spider^Ch68
• Clings to a windowsill by his toes^Ch98

Propping/Wedging

• Props himself in the top corner of a room^Ch65
• Wedges himself between two ceiling rafters^Ch82
• Hides from Kaori by going into an alley and propping himself high between two buildings^Ch102
• [NSFW] Props himself between the wall and ceiling of a shower at an impossible angle^Ch161

Other

• Drops onto a moving car from a tree branch, maintaining his balance with apparent ease even when the car crashes into a light pole^Ch16
• Uses a rope to swing onto a stage and save an idol from a rabid mob^Ch24
• Runs along walls while avoiding booby traps^Ch93
• Saves a man from a collapsing floor^Ch114

Durability

Blunt

• Kaori embeds him into the ground and then smashes his head through the side of a building^Ch52
• Gets sent flying through a door and embedded in a wall^Ch68
• Kaori hits him hard enough to make a crater bigger than he is^Ch78
• Kaori smashes an entire bed over his head, partially sending him through his apartment's floor^Ch79
• Kaori knocks him through the wall of a bathhouse and he isn't bothered at all^Ch85
• Umibozu slams him into a wall hard enough to crater it and he immediately recovered^Ch87
• Takes blows from Umibozu on multiple different ocassions, with Umibozu being strong enough to crush the top of a car and and split a wooden table in half with his strikes^{Ch147/90/55/146}
• Immediately gets up after Kaori smashes him into the pavement^Ch104
• Umibozu rips a lamp post from the ground and throws it at Ryo's face hard enough to bend it^Ch146
• Kaori knocks him through a stone wall^Ch151
• Kaori craters him into the roof of their building^Ch175

Piercing

• Getting swarmed by piranhas and has no visible damage after^Ch112
• Gets slammed by a giant spiked ball trap with no visible puncture wound afterwards^Ch151

Explosive

• Gets caught in a trap where multiple grenades and dynamite packs explode on top of him, blasting a hole in the side of his apartment building^Ch87
  • Here is the destruction from that blast from several other angles^Ch88
• Is hit with a pointblank explosion that destroys a wall in his appartment^Ch102
• Repeatedly shoots through a plane from the inside, causing it to blowup so he can escape^Ch119

Falling

• Jumps from his apartment and crashes onto a car below, heavily denting the top of it without injury^Ch32
  • We see in a later chapter that Ryo lives on the fifth floor^Ch67
• Gets dropped from the fourth floor of a hospital, crashing into the pavement and forming a fairly large crater^Ch38
• [NSFW] Falls from a rooftop and craters into the street^Ch93

Electrical

• Kaori electrocutes him twice with a defibrillator and he immediately gets up (though the third time causes his heart to stop)^Ch47
  • Afterwards he was revealed to have been temporarily crippled by the attacks^Ch47
• A door trap electrocutes him and soon after the same thing happens when he touches barred windows^Ch53

Endurance/Survivability

• Saeko kicks him in the face with heels, puncturing his forehead^Ch19
• Has sex with forty women over the course of two weeks, leaving him visibly drained but still able to continue^Ch21
• Capable of fighting effectively even with a broken leg^Ch38
• Gets flattened and pops back into shape^Ch69
• Kaori hits him with a spikey metal ball and a spike goes straight through his head^Ch97
• Drank extensively for two days straight without sleep and was still able to operate at normal efficiency^Ch159

Other

• Gets trampled by a crowd of rabid idol fans that had previously burst through several walls^Ch24
• Gets crushed under a large weight^Ch67
• His Super Mokkori pushes him up against concrete with enough force to crack it^Ch86
• Is standing on the roof of a several story tall abandoned building when Kaori accidentally triggers the explosives she'd filled it with, causing the building to collapse and he survives^Ch175
• Pray for his recovery...^Ch185
  • Oh god not again...^Ch185
• After getting injected with a tranquilizer, he was able to defend a surgeon immediately after, claiming a Yakuza's animosity negated the tranquilizer's effects^Ch186

Cock

Yes, you read that right. Ryo's penis, his erection, his boner, his mokkori. It's frankly capable of some pretty incredible things and seems to have stats that are completely independent of Ryo's other physical abilities. So much so that it's probably best to have an entire section of the thread dedicated to it. I'm not sorry.
Physicals
Strength/Growing Power

• Bursts through bullet proof glass^Ch21
• [NSFW] Supports a 100kg weight^Ch28
• After getting placed in a steel chastity belt, Ryo eventually gets a boner so strong that it breaks through^Ch32
  • Though this does leave him in a... rough state^Ch32
• Bursts straight through a wall (though he was unable to free himself afterwards)^Ch40
• Traps Ryo's head between it and the roof of a car like a vice^Ch46
• Knocks a door off its hinges^Ch73
• Pushes against a store's wooden support beams with enough force to crack concrete and eventually destroy several of the wooden beams^Ch86

Speed

• Moves to avoid a bullet from a revolver when is was an inch away from hitting him^Ch53

Durability

• [NSFW] Is electrocuted when it touches a mannequin that had been attached to an electrical outlet, and after the initial shock Ryo recovered mostly fine^Ch24
• Withstands getting smashed through a wall twice^Ch45
• Caves in Ryo's face when his head is slammed into it by Kaori, implying its durability is higher than that of Ryo himself^Ch48
• A rapist breaks his ankle trying to kick it^Ch48
• [NSFW][Anti-Feat] Gets trapped in the door of a train^Ch104
  • This was revealed to have seriously injured him^Ch104

Abilities
Detecting Women

• His boner let him detect that his assailant was a pretty woman even when he couldn't see them in the dark^Ch12
• Ryo acts up after accidentally walking in on his client who had disguised herself as a man, despite not actually seeing through the disguise himself^Ch77
• [NSFW] Acts as a "beauty detector" to lead him towards beautiful women, but it has been fooled by dirty magazines before^Ch104

Other

• Even if you don't use your eyes Ryo is canonically packing heat^Ch38
• I just... I... uhhh...^Ch45
• Can repeatedly retract it at will and at a moment's notice^Ch45
• [Anti-Feat] Seeing a princess in a leotard did nothing for him, with Ryo describing it as if she has an aura that blocks his horny power^Ch65
  • He later describes this aura as "the repulsion of a girl who didn't know what love was", which disappeared when the princess began to fall for him^Ch65
  • The princess' handler later describes it a "noble aura" that not even Ryo can break through^Ch65

Intelligence

General Knowledge
World Knowledge

• Claims to have every criminal case from the last ten years memorized^Ch10
• Does heavy background checks and memorizes information on women people he's working with^Ch60
• When a woman describes how her sister was shot during a fight between Yakuza, Ryo was already familiar with the situation^Ch102

Weapon/Chemical Knowledge

• Recognized the scent of chloroform in a room despite it being ventilated from it's earlier use^Ch41/40
• Disarms a car bomb^Ch51
• Immediately recognizes an old scar as a bullet wound^Ch102
• Disarms a bomb^Ch119
• When a fire alarm is set off, he quickly recognizes that the smoke is closer to that of a smoke bomb than an ordinary fire^Ch136

Deduction

• Recognizes that his assailant was using old guerilla warfare tactics and that he was about to be driven directly into a minefield^Ch12
• Determines that a room must have a secret passageway based on the kidnapper's rush^Ch41
• Figures out that a man was actually poisoned rather than dying of sickness just by looking at his picture^Ch92

Other

• Disables a mansion's alarms^Ch95
• Determines a woman's measurements with a glance^Ch104
• Tricks his client's uncle into revealing his true motivation for stopping her business^Ch109
• Managed to steal classified information from a police detective's computer using unknown means^Ch118
• Seemingly capable of basic lockpicking (though he may have just kicked the door down)^Ch132

Planning

• Lures a serial killer into attacking him in his room, only for it to be revealed that he had placed a mannequin under his covers while he was hiding under the bed itself, which also allowed his ally to get a glimpse of the mystery killer's face^Ch2
• When a mob boss believed he had led him into a trap, its revealed that Ryo had planned for it, stuffing his car's tailpipe with nails to shred through the enemy force and stealing an armored truck full of drug money^Ch6
• Came up with a plan to fake a man's death by literally shooting him, wounding him to the point where he could still escape before his body was supposedly destroyed in a car explosion^Ch10
  • While the escape route was partially ruined by Ryo's assistants, he managed to stall the man they were trying to fool long enough for the plan to be successful anyway^Ch10
• Impersonates a sergeant so that he can slip a sleeping agent into her entire squad's dinner, then proceeds to impersonate the man their squad was working for and order that they quickly eat their dinner, which leads to every guard being knocked out so that Ryo could engage with the boss unimpeded^Ch20
• Intentionally chose his apartment because there is only one location someone could potentially snipe him from that was over a kilometer away, which allowed him to predict where a Yakuza sniper would set up^Ch60
• After the head of the police narcotics division admits to various crimes to a woman who he is about to eliminate, Ryo announces that it was all captured on a secret microphone he hid in the room^Ch61
• Knowing that his old partner was trying to kill him he used a mirror to trick her so that he could appear behind her^Ch113
• After briefly handling a thug's gun he's revealed to have placed a bug on it so that he will track down the woman Ryo was looking for for him^Ch121

Quick Thinking

• When a man takes a girl hostage in front of a large crowd, Ryo shoots through his own hand to slow the bullet down so that it takes out the assailant but doesn't break the glass behind him^Ch2
  • It's later confirmed that he made sure to avoid the bones in his hand, making this an accuracy feat as well^Ch2
• Uses the sparks from a bullet to briefly illuminate a pitch black room so that he could see his target^Ch3
• After noticing that he was surrounded by a group of Yakuza, he goads a massive man into attacking them so he and his client can make a quick getaway^Ch23
• In order to accomplish his mission of causing a truck to crash without revealing his identity as the City Hunter, he pretends to assault the woman he was with so that she would push him away, sending him tumbling towards the truck so he could clandestinely shoot its tires^Ch74

Mental Fortitude/Pain Resistance

• Doesn't react to the pain of shooting through his own hand^Ch2
• Resists the urge to emote after getting shot twice in the ass with arrows^Ch25
• Breaks his own leg to get himself admitted into a hospital^Ch38
  • Doesn't react after using that same broken leg to foil a hitman which was later said to have broken his leg even further^Ch38
• Bluffs that he swapped an assassin's hidden gun camera with an ordinary one, being so convincing that the assassin both surrendered and wet himself in fear^Ch51
• Was able to deny his urges when a sexy lady was flirting with him in order to keep up the appearance that he was engaged to his client so that her suitors would leave her alone^Ch106
• Doesn't hesitate when a bullet grazes his cheek, continuing his fight^Ch175

Gear

Firearms

• Colt .357 Magnum^Ch2
  • Has a second magnum he keeps in an ankle holster for if the first one runs out of ammo^Ch6
  • Comes with a scope for longer distance shots and a silencer which was effective enough that he didn't draw attention after firing in the middle of a crowd of people^Ch28/10
  • While it theoretically only holds six bullets he has fired more than that either without reloading or by seamlessly reloading between shots^Ch28
  • Strong enough to fire straight through a plane's exterior (also another example of firing more than six shots in rapid succession)^Ch119
  • Was modified by a legendary gunsmith to be more accurate^Ch124
  • Shots partially destroy various gravestones^Ch147
  • Fires straight through a stone wall into the opposite wall^Ch175
• .44 Magnum^Ch19
• .41 Magnum (he considers this to be a "one of a thousand" gun with far greater accuracy than other firearms)^Ch19
• M36 Revolver^Ch7
• M686 Revolver^Ch90
• Rifle^Ch1
• Pump-Action Shotgun^Ch6
• Machine Gun^Ch26
• Submachine Gun^Ch114
• Sniper rifle^Ch27

Ammo

• Full metal jacket bullets for his Colt Python that ricochet off of solid surfaces and produce sparks when they do^Ch3
• A golden .500 Nitro Express that Ryo claimed can move a 2 ton object a whole foot when fired from over 100 meters away, which when fired into a target's ear sticks to the inside of their skull without piercing through^Ch1
• A .30 M1 Carbine Jacket that fires and spins slowly enough that it can shoot through a man's stomach without damaging any internal organs, resulting in a wound rather than a fatal shot^Ch10
• Rubber bullets^Ch28

Other Long Ranged Weapons

• Bazooka^Ch37
  • Blasts large craters in the street^Ch37
  • Kaori later used one to blast sizeable holes in concrete^Ch114
• Twin RPGs^Ch191
• Crossbow with short arrows, making them impossible to pull out^Ch2
• Various throwing knives lining his inner coat^Ch11
• Pachinko balls which he can flick with pinpoint accuracy^Ch102

Melee Weapons

• Garrote wire^Ch4
• Hidden ankle blades^Ch5
• A glove with a metal attachment that gives a secondary blow to whoever he punches^Ch6
• Brass knuckles^Ch25
• A hidden knife in his belt buckle^Ch142

Explosives

• Nitroglycerine, which Ryo claims an entire spilled bottle would blow a pair of kidnappers to smitherines^Ch16
• Remote explosives which he uses to destroy a lab^Ch37
• Dynamite that when used repeatedly eventually resulted in a yakuza clan's headquarters to be completely leveled (the headquarters was a fairly tall building)^Ch84
• His partner Kaori has shown to pack grenades which she would've gotten from his armory^Ch168
  • This is true for flash bangs as well^Ch172

Espionage/Tracking/Surveillance

• Small microphones to bug targets^Ch6
• Police radio^Ch6
• Homing transmitter^Ch42
  • Ryo has dozens of them attached to people of interest around the city, all of which he can track using a device in his car^Ch80
  • Their signals are fairly weak, having a range of only one kilometer^Ch80
• Gear that allows him to listen in on Umibozu's phone call^Ch174

Chemicals

• A ring laced with fast acting poison^Ch5
• A fast acting sleeping pill which he stores in his tooth^Ch20
  • Says that someone he used it on would sleep "at least till tomorrow" (the time of day he used it is unclear but it would presumably be at least 12 hours)^Ch113
• His secret weapon PATCH-WORK PATTERN PANTALOONS (a pair of boxer briefs that are filled with packets of various chemicals, including anesthetics, truth serum, and sleeping agents)^Ch20
• Instant acting sleeping powder^Ch64

Other

• Bullet proof vest (along with fake blood packs to be extra convincing)^Ch6
• Ear plugs^Ch109
• Lighter^Ch142
• The inner lining of his coat is lined with a special chemical that, when burned, causes a massive cloud of tear gas to emit from it and the outer coat is packed with plastic explosives and a detonator^Ch142
  • He also keeps various hidden weapons in the lining of his coat, such as a dismantled revolver, a miniature time bomb that he uses to blow up a criminal organization's ammo depot, and most importantly condoms^Ch141/142

This Thread is Continued in the Comments Below

“Deadly Attractor” (TOC)
by P. Orin Zack
[2003]
 
Chapter Six
... Downtown Los Angeles ...
Leonard Aroun was on a mission, he just wasn’t too clear on why. What he did know was that the tenuous trail he’d been following pointed to somewhere in Los Angeles. But then, what good is a trail if you don’t know why you’re following it? Being blackballed tended to do that to a person. Well, it did for Leonard, anyway.
It was late afternoon, and he’d been walking the streets of downtown L.A. since morning. He stepped aside to let a knot of self-involved Angelinos pass by, and was distracted by the irregular noise of a laboring delivery vehicle hovering on aGrav lifts a few stories up. Resuming his stride, he took to studying the architecture of the hodge-podge collection of individually interesting office towers that gave the city its famously anarchic appearance.
Appearances, however, could be not only deceiving, but from what he’d learned lately, downright contrived. At the moment, it wasn’t the buildings that really interested him so much as what he suspected was going on inside one of them. The fact that there were subliminals in the com didn’t really surprise him at first. After all, they embedded data in conversational channels to carry all the ancillary data cues used to indicate things like privacy and encryption levels, or even the watermarks that identified location or carrier. These other subliminals, though, they were different. Rather than being introduced by the service’s encoding gear, they were layered over the signal somewhere en route. So if you watched one of the courthouse newsfeeds, or made use of the MedCenter’s automated self-diagnosis interactives, you’d also get the unexpected benefits of whatever imperceptible messages were being smeared on them like the icing on a cake. The thing was, nobody would admit to even knowing about them. So, after frustrating himself trying to get answers the usual way, he’d taken to searching them out himself.
That’s what had led him to Los Angeles, and why he was prowling the streets this afternoon. After quitting that obnoxious civil service job, it seemed that nobody wanted to hire him. It was as if having sullied himself in the ranks of some faceless GD bureaucracy had made him a pariah for some reason. Burying his depression in old videos, he got caught up in movies that reflected his own situation, and was particularly intrigued by the ones about how Senator Joseph McCarthy had bullied his 20th-century congressional contemporaries into subverting the US Constitution in the name of political fear-mongering.
Those who had challenged his dubious authority, a knot of Hollywood screenwriters who stood up to the mock investigations he chaired, were forced from their jobs, prevented from working, and had their reputations destroyed. Leonard identified with these blackballed renegades, and resolved to emulate them by attempting to expose the truth behind the treatment he was getting. In fact, he was so taken by those grainy images of the Hollywood Ten that he’d taken to dressing like them as well. Of course, there were limitations to what the ragbots were capable of producing, so he’d had to settle for rendered tweed instead of the real thing.
Leonard stopped outside one of the less interesting-looking buildings, and looked through its grimy glass facade at the streams of non-descript people hurrying across yet another impersonal lobby. It was the kind of building that attracted the sort of businesses that didn’t concern themselves with impressing visitors, the kind that was home to the sort of businesses most likely to front for the far more intriguing activities that he was after.
His reflection in the glass made him seem a displaced traveler from a past that few people bothered to learn about anymore. After all, a double-breasted tweed suit wasn’t exactly the kind of fashion trend that was swirling through the social networks these days. Self-consciously straightening his tie, and squaring his shoulders to match the stiff look of those inside, he stepped through the airwall doorway and glanced around. There were two banks of elevators, and judging from the logo on the doors, they were the expensive aGrav variety that eliminated the annoying feeling of actually going up or down. His usual strategy, when checking out a possible haven for whoever was inserting the subliminals, was to play into the unstable persona he’d created and get lost in as many places as possible. Being loud and annoying was among the best ways to keep people from really noticing you. So he headed towards the bank that served the upper floors, and waited.
Soon, the doors of one unit slid open, and several people stepped out. Once the traffic cleared, Leonard stepped in and the door started to slide shut behind him. Before he finished turning around, though, a woman rushed in, grabbed his wrist, swung his arm up behind him and pulled his finger back nearly to the breaking point, forcing him to bend forward. The door was closed by this time, and the elevator had presumably started rising through the express floors.
She reached out and jabbed the emergency stop button. “All right,” she said gruffly, “other hand on your head. Now!”
Leonard tried to pull away, but only succeeded in making his finger hurt more. “What do you want?”
She jerked it back even further. Leaning close, she whispered in his ear, “I said, put your other hand on your head.”
His eyes watered. “Ow! If you want money,” he said, catching his breath, “I don’t—”
“Look,” she said, straightening a bit, “here’s your choice: I check the pockets of that bizarre getup, or you lose a finger.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”
While Lenny waited for an answer, the woman opened his jacket and started patting him down. Judging from her technique, he figured that she knew something about anatomy, because she started with the places where something might be hidden, and that made the search somewhat intimate. When she found something in a pocket, she reached in, pulled it out, and threw it on the floor. Finally, she put two fingers against his cheek, and turned his face up towards her. “You first. What were you doing outside the courthouse yesterday morning?”
He squirmed to shake his head free. “Outside the—?”
She pushed his arm up further. “If you don’t stop struggling, I’ll knock you out and get the answers myself. Now, why were you there?”
Leonard’s eyes stung. “Get them your—? What are you, a psychic or something?”
He must have been close, because she hesitated long enough for him to slip free, grab her arm and push her against the elevator door with it. “Your turn,” he said. “What’s this about?”
While he waited for an answer, she narrowed her eyes, and then closed them tightly. A few seconds later, he yelped in response to what felt like a hot poker burrowing into the base of his skull. Stepping back from his attacker, he rubbed the phantom pain from his neck and shuddered.
“Simple,” she said. “I want to know if you’re one of them.”
He spread his hands in confusion. “One of who?”
She frowned. “That’s the other thing I don’t know.”
“Great,” he said, stooping to recover the items she’d tossed on the floor. “So I’ve got a psychic stalker who doesn’t know what she’s after. Look, there are two things you ought to know. First, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. And second, mugging someone in an elevator would never work anyway.”
She cocked her head. “Why not?”
Leonard gestured towards the ceiling. “Subliminals. That’s why I’m here right now, and that’s why I was at the courthouse yesterday.”
“Sub—?”
He shook his head as he brushed himself down. “Subliminals. Covert messages in the com channels, in the elevators, everywhere. I’ve been tracking down the source. Who did you think I was, anyway?”
She shook her head in dark amusement. “Someone a lot more dangerous than that. Whoever they are, they have the means to screw with reality. I’ve seen it happen.”
Leonard thought for a moment while running the heel of his hand down the jacket’s sealstrip. The one Lester Cole wore may have had functional buttons, but the ragbot could only provide decorative ones. If what she claimed had any truth to it at all, then the stories he’d been spreading might actually be true. He glanced around at the walls of their temporary prison, and then looked her squarely in the eye. “Here’s what. If either of these groups are in this building, they’re going to be wanting to talk with both of us, so I suggest you release this thing so we can go somewhere safe to talk this out.”
She nodded, released the stop button, and relaxed her stance. The safeties would return the car to the lobby in a moment, so they quickly brushed themselves down and took up the personae of confused, sartorially mismatched tourists in a scary situation. As the doors slid open, they pushed through the crowd while making idle chatter about spending their first vacation in years stuck in an elevator.
Once outside, the woman gestured towards the right. “My flier’s that way.”
“Before I go anywhere with you,” he said as they walked, “I want to know your name.”
 
Good question, Angela thought. It was one aspect of revealing herself that she hadn’t considered, and it started a torrent of memories sluicing through her mind.
The leading edge of that sudden flood brought her back a year, to Australia, and to that chaotic morning at the NullArbor City MedCenter. After fruitlessly wracking her brain for a way to identify their mysterious advisor, she’d put it out of her mind for a while and thought again about the ice cave. If the sudden retroactive appearance of that cave was caused by whoever had derailed the work being done by the people whose life-patterns she’d traced, then one of two things would have had to be true. Either her own investigation was being intentionally deflected, or the ice cave was just a side effect of some other, unrelated alteration being stitched into the fabric of reality.
The first path of that logic fork was tantalizing, because it would have given her unprovable evidence of being on the right track. Unfortunately, it didn’t make much sense. After all, if someone had the power to arrange for that sherpa accident, why would they go to the trouble to create a nonexistent ice cave to save her? There were easier and cheaper ways to scare someone.
The other path suggested that she was simply the lucky beneficiary of someone else’s misfortune. This made more sense, but at the expense of being impossible. Yet if it were true, it implied that her nemesis was steering a process rather than picking discrete events, because that’s the only way to get unintended consequences.
But then if her accident, her rescue, and her being at the MedCenter weren’t planned, her nemesis wouldn’t know that she was looking for him. And if that were true, she’d realized, then he wouldn’t be explicitly hiding his identity from her. Which in turn meant that the advisor, who she suspected of having orchestrated this and other events, would not be on his guard. So in a manner of speaking, she had the element of surprise. And with the element of surprise, perhaps she would be able to draw him out into the open. But the morning shift had come on duty by then, and there wasn’t much time left.
Angela shook the memory off, lest it interfere with the business at hand. “For the moment,” she said several strides later, “call me Cynthia.”
Her amusement at re-using the first alias she’d crafted brought her back once again to that morning in the MedCenter, and the reason she needed it. Events had cascaded so quickly over the next few hours that she wasn’t sure if she still remembered them clearly. The most important one, of course, had been the simplest. To draw the man out, to make him drop his guard long enough for her to learn who he was, all she had to do was put her neck on the block. The people she’d traced were clearly important to him, so by making the connections among their ‘accidents’ public, he’d have to act, if only to cover it up. Which meant that all she really needed to do was have a talk with one of the staff.
The call nurse who answered her attention request got an earful. Angela explained that because she’d been cooped up for so long, she really needed someone to talk to. Happy to gather fodder for the rumor mill, the nurse listened as Angela reeled off a tall story involving several of the people she’d been tracking, placing herself in a fictional nexus of their respective influence networks. Then, after releasing her conversational bait back into the wild, she sat back to scan for sudden changes in the MedCenter’s psychic noise.
It had happened shortly after breakfast. In the midst of the soundless roar, she felt the psychic equivalent of a searchlight suddenly brighten the room. While her target was checking her out, she quickly reached out towards the source of that probe. For a moment, it seemed as though she was going to be able to reach inside his mind and see who he was, when an odd sort of psychic shield got in the way. Working with patients, she’d encountered a wide variety of defensive walls, but his wasn’t like any of them. Then, when she attempted to push through the shield, it seemed like the awareness space inside it had been twisted in some direction that she didn’t understand.
A moment later, as she recalled, the door had burst open. One of the MedCenter Security people held her down while the nurse she’d used for bait gave her a transdermal — some kind of sedative — and babbled about how sad it was that Angela had succumbed to such a sudden mental breakdown. She resisted as long as she could, and then settled back into a drug-induced fog. Instead of being released, the nurse said, she was to be transferred after lunch to a security ward for dangerous patients. Fortunately, she was able to fight through it once they left, and during the usual lunchtime chaos, she escaped.
Feeling a bit paranoid, she’d decided to make a clean break with her problem, and went underground. Her first attempt at crafting a phony identity didn’t work out too well, but that month or so of living as ‘Cynthia Thedic’ gave her the practice she needed to get it done right. And perhaps now, she thought, would be the final payoff.
They’d reached her beat-up flier by this time. Once they were both secured, she spun up the fans, lifted into the skyway, and headed for the spot in the Angeles Crest where she’d left her gear.
 
Even before she’d gotten to L.A., Angela knew she’d need a set of wings. She scanned the resale listings, picked out a dirty fan job that was queued up for refurb, and made an offer. Then, as she’d done with the flier she left tucked away down under, she disabled the thing’s automatic nav system before leaving the used-flier lot. With that taken care of, she started hunting down a place to camp, and settled on a hidden alcove in the Angeles Crest canyon wall because it made an inverse reflection of the ice cave that had started her underground life. For one thing, it had been there before she arrived, and for another, it was not enclosed.
At the moment, they were hovering over the ridge that sheltered her temporary home, and she was scanning the area to be certain it was still deserted. After she set down behind the boulder fronting the alcove, and spun down the fans, she turned to her passenger. “You know,” she said, “I still don’t know your name.”
“No?” He smiled insincerely. “You didn’t exactly ask before groping me, now did you?”
She shook her head. “Sorry about that, but I had to be sure. Anyway, I’m asking now.”
He sighed. “It’s Leonard Aroun, but I prefer Lenny. Should I get out, or do you want to talk in here?”
She popped her restraint and turned a bit to lean against the door. “This is fine. So tell me your story.”
He stared out the forward window. “Only if you spill yours.”
“Fair enough,” she said.
Lenny released his restraint, and laid it to the side. “I’m not too good with accents, but I’m pretty sure you’re not from around here.”
“Too right,” she said amiably, emphasizing her Australian accent. “I’m from down under. Started in Canberra, but got degreed in NullArbor City, not too far from Dobrin Center.”
He turned to look at her. “Oh? Did you work for the GD? I mean, being so close to the government complex and all.”
“Me? Work for the GD? Are you nuts?” She shook her head in distaste. “Not a chance. It was bad enough just having those bureaucrat jerks as patients.”
Lenny slid around and leaned against the door, his right arm resting on the dash area. “Then you’re a doctor? But I though you said you were psychic?”
She grimaced. “The two don’t mix, Lenny. I was a Healer.”
He relaxed a bit. “Was?”
“Yeah. But I lost my license about a year ago. Nasty business.” Realizing that she’d lost control of the situation, she raised her hand. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you going to tell me your story?”
“Sorry,” he said, grinning. “It’s just that I used to work for the GD myself. Well, a minor agency of it anyway.”
“Used to?”
He took a breath and crossed his arms. “Well, I didn’t actually get that far. It was more like I was recruited, then bailed partway through the training when I learned more about it.”
“Why?” she said quietly. “What did you find out?”
“That’s, um…” Lenny turned to look out the window. “That’s part of my problem,” he said wistfully. “I don’t remember. It’s like my memories were messed with or something. I still remember everything else, though. I have all my technical skills intact, but the details of that job are just missing.”
She leaned towards him. “What do you remember?”
“Not much, really,” he said. “I think it had something to do with public relations, because they kept tabs on the activities of a lot of organizations. They wanted me because I’m good at teasing out the dynamics of interlocking systems. But the systems they wanted me to work on weren’t technical but social.”
“Social?” Angela echoed.
“Projecting the behavior of groups. Thinking of them like science experiments, where you can remove one person or another, and then see where the models go. It was all pretty arcane, really.”
She frowned, and looked down at the floor. “Removing people,” she said slowly. Then she looked up at him. “That sounds like they were looking for efficient ways to sabotage something.”
“I had the same thought,” he agreed. “But when I brought it up to my manager, he said it was for contingency planning. Something about it just didn’t seem right though.”
“I think I know what you mean,” she said. “So what about it don’t you remember?”
He uncrossed his arms and cupped his right fist in his left hand. “Details. Like the people there, where it was located, the groups I was supposed to be analyzing. Stuff like that. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” she said, a bit hesitantly, “if you let me do a psychic probe, I might be able to get at some of those memories for you.”
“I suppose, but what good would it do?”
Angela swallowed. “Remember what I told you in the elevator? That I was after some people who could screw with reality? I think it’s the same group.”
He narrowed his eyes and leaned towards her. “You mean they mess with reality to remove those people?”
She nodded.
He leaned back against the door. “But how?”
“I’m not sure yet. One thing I do know that is it’s just not natural. So can I take a look?”
Lenny slumped. “Might as well. What do I do?”
She rubbed her hands together. “Get comfortable, close your eyes, and think about that job. I’ll do the rest.”
Angela waited while Lenny slid his hand under the sealstrip to open his jacket, and then spent a moment removing his tie. When he was finished, she leaned towards him, held her hands over his head, took a long breath and closed her eyes.
Probing people’s minds had become something of a habit for her recently, but this was the first time she’d asked permission in the year since she’d gone underground. It felt good, almost like being back in her practice. At least, that’s how she felt until she started to sense what was going on inside his mind. She’d been able to tell that he was hyper just from watching him fidget, and had put it off to a combination of nervousness and caffeine, but once she began to sense the activity behind the scenes, she realized that there was more to it than that.
What she found when she reached into the interwoven energy knot of his consciousness was a more tightly connected network of chi than she had ever seen. Clearly, his interest in the dynamics of interlocking systems was an outward reflection of the incredibly dense network of ideas and memories that made up his inner world. Reaching into it was all the more a tactile experience for the glimpse that it gave her of how he experienced the world. But these sensations weren’t so much memories as they were the filter that his experiences passed through on their way to being stored. And one thing that he was experiencing at the moment was sexual arousal; not the mindless lustful passion too easily mistaken for love, but rather a deeper intrigue, one now fuelling the glimpse she caught of his idle speculation about their possible future together.
Pulling back abruptly in self-conscious protection of his privacy, she turned her attention instead to the wash of memory he was wading through. There were several images contending for his attention, but they had one thing in common: they’d been tampered with. Where there should have been clear images of the people he’d worked with — managers, coworkers and so forth — there were instead pasted-in placeholders, rendered non-entities who meant nothing to him. In a manner of speaking, someone had peace-bonded his memory, rendering it harmless against them.
She opened her eyes. “All right, I’m done.”
He shuddered slightly. “So, what did you find? Any dragons in there?”
“There might as well be. Someone stripped your memories. That’s why you can’t recall the details.”
He chuckled. “Gotta watch out for those exit interviews, I guess. So now what? Can you fix then?”
Angela studied his face for a moment before answering, and noticed for the first time that he’d used length differences to carve a subtle pattern into his short hair. “Unfortunately, no,” she said, frowning suddenly. “If you’d simply forgotten the details, I’d be able to fish them out, but since they’ve been tampered with, that’s not possible.”
“Hmmm.” Lenny looked dejectedly down at her seat. “Is there anything you can do to help?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “How about this. You mentioned subliminal messages when we were fighting in the elevator. How do you know about them?”
He looked up at her and smiled. “I hear them.”
She cocked her head in confusion.
“I know they’ve got to be subliminal, because nobody else hears them. But for me they’re everywhere, and they’re extremely annoying.”
Warming to the prospect of conducting a diagnostic session after a year away from the routine, she inched closer to him. “When did you first notice them?”
He scratched his head. “I’ve been through this with HealthTech’s diagnostic bot, and it’s just a waste of time.”
She touched his hand briefly in consolation. “I’m not surprised. But have you asked a Healer to help?”
Lenny shrugged. “Why bother?”
“Because we can do things that they can’t, that’s why.”
He looked at her for a moment. “Like what, for example?”
Angela smiled broadly and tapped her ear. “Like listen through your ears, that’s what.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, really. All I have to do is set up a psychic link, like I just did a few minutes ago, or like Frank Sanroya is doing in court this week, and share your senses. Your ears in this case.”
He sat back against the door. “You can do that?”
“Sure,” she said happily. “It’s basic diagnostics for a Healer. Want to give it a try?”
“And do what?”
“Like I said, let me listen to the subliminals. If they’re everywhere like you say, all we’d need to do is turn on the com, right?”
He sat for a while with the thought before answering. “Yeah. Sure. All right. Give it a try. Whatever.”
“Okay,” she said. “You hear the things, so tune up a feed with an interesting one, and then give me a minute to wiretap your head.”
He held up his hands in protest. “Do what?”
“Just kidding, Lenny. Relax.”
It took a few minutes for him to decide on a feed. Once that was done, he sat back and waited. Angela closed her eyes and focused on the feeling that she had established earlier of his consciousness. After hunting about for a bit to locate the sensory part of his energy nexus, she began to gently alter the location of her focus and listened. A few moments later, she began hearing the newsreader’s voice as if he were in two places at once. The second one would be how Lenny was hearing it. By consciously ignoring the one with the sonic image coming from her right, she could hear Lenny’s version more clearly. When she did this, she also realized that from his point of view, there were two people speaking. The second voice would be what Lenny reported as the subliminal.
“There is no danger to you,” it said, in a gentle, hypnotic voice. “The news is fun. Buy our sponsor’s products.”
Angela sat back, astonished, and opened her eyes. “Turn that thing off, would you?”
“Sure,” he said, and tapped the power control. “Hear anything?”
She nodded. “Enough to know that I can do without it. Thanks for the demo. I’m happy to report that you’re not crazy; you really do hear voices. So how were you tracking the source?”
“By listening.” He looked around the alcove before continuing. “Most feeds have generic announcements like the one you just heard, though they’re tailored to the venue. But some places, like that building, have specialty ones, and something triggers them. If I go into a place with one of those, I can tell what they’re trying to protect by behaving randomly and listening for changes in the messages.” He squirmed in his seat. “Listen, I’m getting a bit cramped in here. Mind if I get out to stretch my legs?”
Angela nodded and opened her door. “Good idea. I think I’ll join you.”
He continued after getting out and shutting the door behind him. “The problem is that the triggers are usually pretty specific. So in an elevator, for example, if they want to keep people off of some floor, the message only gets triggered if that floor is requested. The message would tell you that it was an error, and that you must have wanted to get off on some other floor.”
“But then what do you do?” She asked as she knelt beside her bedroll. “If you get off anyway, you’d call attention to yourself, wouldn’t you?”
He laughed. “That’s the beauty of acting irrationally. You can get away with just about anything. Which reminds me, you seem to have skated out of your part of the bargain.”
She looked at him quizzically while laying out the mattress. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve told you a lot about me. Now it’s your turn.”
“Oh, that.” She scooted onto the mattress and motioned for him to join her. “What do you want to know?”
He stepped onto the cushion, and then descended, cross-legged in one smooth motion. “Not play that game, for one thing.”
She shook her head. “What game?”
He put his hands on the mattress and rotated in place to face her, and then lightly tapped her nose with his forefinger. “By posing that question, you set up a dynamic in which I have to know what to ask in order to get anywhere. It’s not only a stifling strategy, as far as conversation goes, it’s also a covert control maneuver.”
“I suppose I deserve that,” Angela said, amused. “After all, you did tell me that you worked with dynamics.”
He nodded happily. “So would you like to try again?”
“Okay.” She looked at him briefly. “Look, before I start, would you mind taking that jacket off? You look uncomfortable with it all twisted up like that, and for some reason it keeps reminding me of the GD drones I saw too many of back home.”
“Sure.” Lenny shrugged, slipped his faux-tweed jacket off, and tossed it aside. The white shirt he wore under it was more conventional, even though it had the kind of collar that went with his period getup. “You were about to tell me about yourself?”
Angela gazed at the alcove wall for a moment before speaking. “Growing up in Canberra, I learned two things. One was that our Australian government was a sham, and the other was that the Global Directorate over in Nullarbor City was, as well.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s like this,” she said quietly. “When people, especially those in power, take a stand on something, they may or may not really believe in it. Some are paid to play the game; others do it to gain influence or to curry favor. Anyone who really pays attention can get a sense of this kind of duplicity, but for natural psychics it’s almost painful to watch. I mean, between the way it’s reflected in people’s auras and the way they suck energy from whoever they’re sucking up to at the moment, it’s kind of hard to miss.”
Lenny squeezed her knee gently. “I didn’t realize the world was so hard for a psychic to deal with.” Then, smiling, he added, “So, I guess we have something in common.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said, raising her chin with his finger. “We both have to put up with things that other people don’t even know are happening. The only difference is that as far as I know, I’m the only one with my particular ‘gift’. So what did you do?”
“Well,” she said, unfolding her legs to lay edgewise along the mattress, “At first, I tried to ignore it.”
“Been there,” he said lightly. “Didn’t work.”
“So, after asking around, I decided that the best thing to do was to learn more about it. To study techniques and learn what to do with it.”
He looked at her curiously for a moment, and then let his gaze drift waistward. “So you became a Healer?”
“Not exactly,” she said, propping herself up a bit higher. “I became a teenage shark. I figured that if they could get away with that sort of thing, then a psychic ought to do a whole lot better at it.”
Lenny unfolded his legs and stretched out along the opposite edge of the mattress, leaving about a foot between them. “How’d it work out?”
She laughed. “Not good. A lot of people had thought of that long before I had, especially at the racetrack. It sort of evened out the field, but didn’t change much.”
He placed his palm on the open area between them. “I could have told you that. Upgrading to psychic competition wouldn’t change the dynamic, just the tactics.”
Angela idly traced the veins on the back of his hand with a fingertip. “I guess. So anyway, when I got my head back to learning something useful, I ended up palling around with a few kids who idolized the jerks at the local MedCenter.”
Lenny slipped his hand out from under her finger and wove his fingers into hers. “Which, I guess, meant that you’d have to go the other route and become a Healer.”
She gently moved her hand against his, savoring the feel of skin against skin. “Yeah, that’s what happened, but how did you know?”
He curled his fingers and held her hand tightly. “It’s just your dynamic, that’s all.”
“Hmmm,” she said, looking into his eyes. “What say we try a twosome?”
 
(TOC)

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e121a23b53d0b1b8aee73eb7001bf10ac4e7153d
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/w6gzd3.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Note

We are probably going to work on a batch release for the whole season at some point, so feel free to let us know if you spot (or have spotted) any errors we can buff out before "finalising" the release.

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f1f5dd4383a3571ac01fc64aefd5be21b694f948
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/7o1cb3.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Notes

I'm flying solo this week, so please be patient with any torrent downloading this week since it'll be slower for a while, make sure to seed after you're done.

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro

Anyone wanna help refine this priest otk deck? Essentially, the idea is to survive and stall to turn 9, before which you'll play Razza, and two Careless Crafters for 0 cost spells, then at turn 9 play Hedonis, sing along buddy, and paper craft angel to OTK using a combination of alternating bandages, and 0 cost double HP. Generally.. stats on board won't matter too much as with max set up (both fan clubs, both sets of bandages etc) equal to a total of 50 random damage across the board so 9/10 times unless the board is flooded it works out.
At the moment, the deck is formatted to just heal over damage, but I'm curious to whether or not it needs more wipes and control rather than just healing over.
The general game plan is to tutor out your combo pieces as soon as possible, and hunker down. Decklist below:

heldeheldehel

Class: Priest

Format: Standard

Year of the Pegasus

2x (1) Crimson Clergy

1x (1) Deafen

2x (1) Fan Club

1x (1) Flash Heal

2x (1) Funnel Cake

1x (1) Holy Smite

2x (1) Idol's Adoration

2x (2) Creation Protocol

2x (2) Holy Springwater

2x (2) Sing-Along Buddy

1x (2) Twilight Torrent

2x (3) Careless Crafter

1x (3) Holy Nova

2x (3) Papercraft Angel

2x (3) Pendant of Earth

1x (4) Heartbreaker Hedanis

1x (4) Serenity

1x (5) Raza the Resealed

2x (6) Lightbomb

AAECAZ/HAgiEnwSFnwTLoATMxgXI/wXJgAaLlQbGqAYLougDhqQFucQFoukF7fcF+/gFpp0GmqAGxKgGxagGorMGAAA=

To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

(I was going to post this on the 9th anniversary of Haru no Carnival, but some issues came up, so I had to delay it. I will discuss those issues later in the post. Skip to the end if you actually want to listen to the song.)
For those who are unaware, Ima Koko Kara is the theme song for the movie Pretty Cure All Stars: Haru no Carnival. There are three official versions of the song. One is sung by the Pretty Cure and was an insert song, another version is sung by the J-Pop idol group Morning Musume and was used as the movies ending theme, and the third version was sung by the opening and ending theme singers for the franchise. It was never officially released and can only be partially heard in the teaser trailer.
Or at least that's what everyone thought.
I was exploring this website called vgmdb.net which contains information on CD releases for video games and anime. I was checking their information on Precure's CD releases which was when I noticed something interesting. I found a CD for Ima Koko Kara expect it wasn't either of the versions used in the movie.
The website listed 3 performers who had all previously sang theme songs for the franchise: Gojo Mayumi (Max Heart OPs and EDs; Splash Star EDs) Uchiyae Yuka (Splash Star OP) and Ikeda Aya (Heartcatch and Smile OPs; Suite EDs). I also want to mention that Uchiyae Yuka sang 39 Fairies, an insert song from Haru no Carnival.
There was also another singer listed named 二場裕美 (I'm assuming the romaji of her name would be Futaba Hiromi). I couldn't find that much information on her, but apparently she provided some of the background vocals in Heartcatch's OP (You can find her name listed as one of the background vocalists).
Curious to see if this was the actual lost version, I copypasted the barcode and found it was included as a bonus CD for the Special Edition Blu-Ray of Haru no Carnival. Here is an article with details on the Blu-Ray's contents: 総勢40人のプリキュアが登場！『映画 プリキュアオールスターズ 春のカーニバル』ブルーレイ＆DVD 7/15発売決定！！｜HMV&BOOKS onlineニュース
I also found the Japanese Wikipedia article for Cure Quartet (5 GoGo! ED 2) which listed another group from the franchise known as "Pretty Cure Singers+1". This was the same group mentioned earlier that had sung the recording of Ima Koko Kara.
Seeing all of this, I realized that if the song had been officially released as a CD, then somebody had definitely uploaded it online at some point, So I began searching on Google. What I did was copy paste the Japanese title for Ima Koko Kara, as well as the Japanese name for "Pretty Cure Singers+1". Unfortunately, all I could find on there were websites selling the Blu-ray. I switched over to Bing and did searched the same thing. I found a link to a billibilli video which included the singers mentioned above in its description (For those who don't know, billibilli is a Chinese video website, similar to YouTube). Curious, I clicked on the link. The upload date of the video matched the day that the Blu-ray was sold. I listened to the "Watashi" at the beginning of the song and immediately recognized the vocalist as Gojo Mayumi. The final chorus sounds different than the snippet used in the teaser; I'm guessing they added some background vocals. Anyway, have a listen for yourself: 剧场版「光之美少女All Stars:春之嘉年华♪」特典CD_哔哩哔哩_bilibili
Now, I want to address the issues I mentioned earlier. While I was first drafting this post, I read the rules for the subreddit which mentioned that piracy/torrents are not allowed. billibilli is a legal website but the video wasn't an official upload and I wanted to make sure that I wasn't breaking any rules so I messaged the mods. A few weeks have passed and I still haven't gotten a response so I decided to just make the post anyways. Hopefully, I'm not violating any rules. Also, I know that this post may seem pretty long but I wanted to provide some context on how I found the video.
Bonus: At the time I found the video, the 20th anniversary cover of Futari wa's OP along with the new medleys hadn't been uploaded on YouTube yet, so I decided to search for them on billibilli. Turns out some people had actually uploaded them on there. Moral of the story: If you can't find a song on any other website, than search for it on billibilli lol.

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:fec2135418fa325ed6c1998739504008b7d04887
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/0uues1.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro
• Quality Checking: KingAphrodite

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:9c6084918a2029edcbda3629869679ea06888a9a
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/spvv40.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro
• Quality Checking: KingAphrodite

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:a78c9bd00645887e964ceb65431af66b82cbeab4
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/97szms.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro
• Quality Checking: KingAphrodite

This was a short story called Visions of the Sleeping God in the 3E Necrons codex. I thought it was interesting because it seems to show a depiction of the sleeping Void Dragon's prison that differs from the way its portrayed in Mechanicum, let alone modern lore. It also has some weird implications of some sort of deliberate attempt to feed the Void Dragon that has never really been expanded on at all.

Zaraphiston pronounced the last invocation and looked towards his master for the final act of the ritual. The Despoiler held a bound Space marine, identifiable as a Space Wolf by his fangs and pack tattoos, securely in the Talon of Horus. With a single, slow swinng of his Daemon Sword Drach'nyen, ABaddon cut from shoulder to hip. Letting the split cadaver fall limply, Abaddon thrust Drach'nyen into the altar before him. Rivulets of rich blood ran down the blade and seeped through the idols, totems and fetishes that covered the shrine. The alter began to shake, crimson tendrils of smoke spiralled up from it, coalescing into a fanged and horned visage that gazed down on the Despoiler and his Sorcerer.
Zaraphiston addressed the apparition.
"Hragnore, spirit of the warp, I command you in the name of the Four Powers to speak."
A billowing vapourous claw reached out fromt eha pparition to stir the thick blood on the altar, which bubbled vilely in response. The daemonic manifestation spoke with a voice like a howling gale.
"I have expected your summons, Abaddon thrice-cursed. I will tell you want you wish to know but heed well, you will pay a higher price than this offering. One day, your soul will be the plaything of the Flesh Hounds."
Abaddon raised the Talon of Horus and reached inside the crimson mist. For a moment the Talon burned with a dark flame and the apparition howled in pain. The Despoiler leaned forward.
"You dare threaten me? I think not. Learn to serve with grace, little daemon, or suffer the consequences. The warp is full of whispers about Mars, tell us what you know."
With a last twist he withdrew the Talon, crimson tendrils dripping fromt he claws. The daemon hissed and smouldered but lowered its gaze.
"In the shade of Terra, beneath the mountains of mist, there is a new type of death. A sacrifice of men, but the precious souls are not consumed, they are cast adrift. Many are the daemons that wait like carrion to feast on the leavings from this rich table."
Zaraphiston turned excitedly to Abaddon.
"Mars is in the shade of Terra and the mountains of mist are Noctis Labyrinthus, the augurs were true."
The Despoiler nodded then fixed his gaze on the daemon, which recoiled before him.
"Show me more. What is on Mars?"
The daemon form blurred and contracted into a pulsing ball of crimson ichor. As if squeezed by an unseen hand the pus oozed onto the altar, covering it in a grisly sheen in which shapes twisted and formed.
The Traitor Marines saw a great chamber of basalt, around it towering machines of antique silver stretched endlessly upward. Set in the floor was a vast sarcophagus of adamantium and gold. From each of the machines in turn a flickering beam of unimaginable energy flowed in a glittering arc to the sarcophagus.
Outside the summoning chamber, Abaddon's Black Legion bodyguards heard an unfamiliar sound, the harsh, grating laughter of the Despoiler.

Note in particular the line " A sacrifice of men, but the precious souls are not consumed, they are cast adrift." The 3E codex didn't present a lot of its lore in a direct, straightforward way so its easy to miss, but the implication back then was very clear that the C'tan didn't consume the souls of mortals. The codex also mentions "the deliciously focused trickles of electromagnetism awoke a hunger in the C'tan quite unlike the one they had sated among the raging torrents of stars", so we can assume this bioelectric energy is what they cosnumed.

Synopsis

The criminal is definitely among us! Somebody is lying. Build a case from clues left at the scene and find the true culprit! The breathtaking deduction game, Crime Scene Returns.

Cast

• Jang Jin (Film Director)
• Park Jiyoon (Announcer)
• Jang Dongmin (Comedian/Genius)
• Key (Idol, SHINEE)
• Joo Hyunyoung (Actress)
• Ahn Yujin (Idol, IVE)

Episode

• Magnet: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:8d36a4fbe37e105ad009387b4fa92319d3a08b70
• Torrent File: https://files.catbox.moe/fgr6ml.torrent
• Subtitles File: https://baechusquad.download

Credits

• Translating: SharpShark (Twitter, Kofi)
• Typesetting: Sepro
• Quality Checking: KingAphrodite