AKAME ASSASINATION (60)
COMET YEAR 3992 – THE BLIGHT HOUSE
"There was once a man who struck fear into the hearts of so many."
The instructor stood before the class, an old English scholar with a polished monocle and a voice like worn leather. Neil sat at the front, posture perfect, listening with the earnest intensity that marked all his studies.
"His true form remains unknown, but he is often depicted with black hair and crimson eyes. Some accounts even describe sharp teeth and claws—like some foul beast."
'People really enjoy making up stories, don't they?' Neil thought, a faint smirk touching his lips.
"While he was a competent fighter, he offered nothing else of value to the Five Swords and was consequently removed. He fled, cowardly, to Vatican City, where he attempted to overthrow the government in a final, pitiable act of treason."
'How can one man be that idiotic?' Neil's grin widened. 'He must have had a miserable life. A complete failure.'
"I will now show you an image of the criminal in question," the instructor announced, dimming the lights and lowering the blinds. A projector hummed to life, casting a holographic image into the center of the room.
Neil's pen slipped from his fingers.
Click.
It hit the floor, the sound absurdly loud in the sudden silence. The air in the room grew heavy, dense.
What Neil saw was not a pathetic, bumbling failure. It was not a man at all.
The hologram depicted a figure draped in shadow and implication. White hair like freshly fallen snow. Eyes not of beastly red, but of a deep, haunting emerald green, luminous and utterly calm. The expression was not one of rage or madness, but of a terrifying, boundless stillness. It was the stillness of a depthless ocean, of a mountain that has watched empires rise and fall. This was not a creature who had failed. This was a creature for whom the concepts of success and failure were beneath notice.
It was on that day, in that silent classroom, that Neil Blight's obsession was born. Not with a failure, but with a phenomenon. He would pursue the sword not just as an art, but as a means to reach that impossible calm, to understand the depth in those emerald eyes.
He would spend years trying to become worthy of a ghost's gaze.
***
PRESENT DAY – NAIROBI CITY CENTER
It took less than fifteen minutes for the local saints to lock down the cultural district. Traffic was rerouted, streets cleared, civilians ushered out with a blend of firm orders and vague urgency. The air smelled of exhaust and suppressed panic.
"Keep it moving, folks! Let's go!" an officer barked, waving a line of cars away from the cordon.
"What's even happening?" a younger cop asked, adjusting his helmet. "They don't usually clear a whole sector unless…"
"Unless the collateral's gonna be biblical," the veteran finished. "Usually they'd let a few blocks burn for the insurance. This? This is them trying to contain something."
BOOOOOOM—!
The explosion wasn't loud; it was deep, a subsonic tremor that vibrated in the teeth and bones. A pillar of dust and fragmented masonry erupted from the East Sun wing's roof.
The two cops stared, mouths agape.
"What… what was the minimum evacuation radius again?"
"Two… two hundred and fifty meters, I think?"
CRASH—!
Something shot from the cloud of debris—a human-shaped projectile trailing smoke. It struck the asphalt just beyond their barricade with force enough to crater the road, skidding to a halt in a spray of shattered pavement.
It was a man in a black t-shirt, his arms ending in cleanly severed stumps at the elbows. He shrugged off a tattered hoodie with a practiced roll of his shoulders, then, with absurd calm, used his foot to slip off a sandal and scratch his calf. He glanced at his missing hands, frowned slightly, then focused. The stumps glowed faintly with a soft, golden light as he concentrated chi into them, sealing the vessels and nerve endings, preventing any bleed-out. It was a procedure of terrifying, clinical efficiency.
He had just finished when the second projectile arrived.
The cops dove for cover as the air pressure spiked. The asphalt where Akame had stood split open with a sharp SCHRIIICK— forming a perfect, intersecting 'X' several inches deep.
In the center of the X, landing with the grace of a falling leaf, was Neil Blight. His blue eyes were fixed solely on Akame, his twin kodachi gleaming under the emergency lights. The objective was now horrifyingly simple: erase the impostor.
He didn't waste a breath. He lunged.
Akame, armless, didn't flinch. As the first kodachi swept for his throat, he pivoted and blocked the razor edge with the sole of his right sandal, using the impact's momentum to catapult himself backward. He landed lightly on a traffic light pole twenty feet up, balancing on the metal like a bird.
THE DANCE OF BLADES & MERCY
What followed was not a fight; it was a shadow-play of evasion and preservation.
Neil became a whirlwind of silver. He flash-stepped, his blades carving the air in vicious arcs—Vertical Split, Horizontal Crescent, Dancing Petals. Each technique was a masterpiece of lethal geometry, designed to dismember and disembowel.
Akame flowed through the storm like water through a sieve. He dropped from the pole, letting a slash cleave the metal where his neck had been. He leaned back, a horizontal cut parting the fabric of his shirt but not his skin. He spun on a heel, a thrust passing through the space his heart had occupied a millisecond prior.
But Neil was not aiming only at Akame. His fury was indiscriminate. A wide slash meant for Akame's legs instead sheared the front tires off an abandoned sedan. A downward chop, dodged, carved a fissure in the road that raced toward a stalled bus where a family still huddled, too terrified to move.
Akame's focus split. Evasion became interception.
As Neil's blade-energy raced toward the bus, Akame was already there. He didn't block it—he redirected it, a micro-shift of his body and a precise kick to the asphalt altering the energy's path into a harmless drain. He grabbed a child who had stumbled into the open and placed her back behind the bus with a gentle nudge from his knee before blurring away from Neil's next furious combo.
He was a phantom guardian, weaving between Neil's killer intent and the innocent bystanders, herding the last few stragglers to safety with pushes, dodges, and the occasional snapped command: "Move!" Each rescue cost him a fraction of space, a micro-second of timing. A shallow gash opened on his cheek. Another grazed his ribs.
Finally, they burst onto a wide, six-lane boulevard. It was utterly deserted, a concrete river emptied by the evacuation. Perfect.
Akame stopped running.
"Stop running away and fight me!" Neil screamed, his voice raw, his perfect composure shattered into furious frustration.
"Jeez, kid," Akame sighed, a bead of blood tracing his jawline. "Is fighting really all you think about?"
"I don't want to hear it from a fraud! Fine! If you won't come to me…"
DUAL KODACHI TECHNIQUE:
He vanished, crossing the thirty meters between them in the time it took to blink. Both kodachi came in a scissoring motion aimed to decapitate.
Akame didn't dodge.
He brought his right stump up. The blades connected with a shriek of metal on… something harder than metal.
CLANG!
Neil's eyes bulged. The blades had not cut. They had been stopped, by a stump now glowing with dense, visible golden energy.
"I think I have enough chi for this," Akame muttered.
The golden light intensified, solidifying. Muscle, tendon, bone, skin—layer by layer, a new hand regenerated from the stump in a matter of seconds, fingers flexing. He repeated the process with his left arm. Two perfect, functional hands now at the ends of his limbs.
'What…?' Neil's mind stuttered. 'He's not using Fragment Energy… I haven't sensed a single drop from him. That's… pure Chi Enhancement? But that's… that's supposed to be impossible at this scale!'
Before Neil could process it, Akame's new right hand shot out, grabbing Neil's wrist. A simple twist—SNAP—dislocated the joint and sent Neil spinning. The boy dropped one kodachi, using his free hand to throw a wild, reinforced punch.
Akame leaned aside, caught the fist in his palm, and shoved. Neil skidded back, grabbing his fallen blade.
The assault renewed—a flurry of jabs, slashes, and thrusts aiming for vitals: heart, throat, eyes. Akame evaded them all, a serene dance in the heart of the storm. They moved into the shadow of a glass office tower. Akame ran up the vertical wall, pushed off, and launched himself feet-first at Neil.
THUMP!
A boot planted squarely in Neil's face. The impact sent him spinning like a top before he crashed into a newsstand, reducing it to splinters. He dragged himself up, using his kodachi as a crutch, blood trickling from his nose.
He looked up.
Akame stood in the middle of the empty boulevard, hands in the pockets of his trousers, looking down at him with an expression that wasn't contempt, or anger, or even pity.
It was assessment.
"Are you… pitying me?" Neil spat, the taste of copper and shame thick in his mouth. "Don't you dare look down on me!"
"Well, it's kind of hard not to," Akame said, his voice calm. "Especially when you're trying so painfully hard."
"Huh?"
"That sword style. The dual kodachi rapid-form. It doesn't suit you. It's too convoluted. Your mind is trying to solve the style's equations while your body is trying to fight. You're using a technique meant for a supercomputer with a human brain."
"So what?" Neil snarled. "You're my teacher now?"
"Nah. I'm burnt out on teaching. But a free tip: if you want something simpler, more direct, use the long sword with one kodachi as an off-hand parry. It'll flow better with your aggression."
"So you can read my moves even easier?!"
"I can read your moves regardless."
Neil fell silent, chest heaving. He was right. Every attack, every feint—it was like Akame had read the script beforehand. Neil hadn't sensed a shred of F.E. from him. The only reason they'd been tracked was Gil's massive energy leak. This man was a void, a black hole of perception.
'I can't move. He'll just read it. He'll block it. I can't win… can I? Damn it. I have no choice.'
Gritting his teeth, Neil placed one kodachi between his teeth, gripping the other tightly. He reached back with his free hand for the long sword on his back.
His fingers closed on empty air.
"!"
"Looking for this?"
Neil's head snapped up. Akame stood a few paces away, casually spinning Neil's own katana on the tip of his index finger, balancing the full-length weapon as if it were a feather.
"When did you—?!"
"Like I said," Akame interrupted, his voice quiet but carrying perfectly in the deserted street. "You should be more careful. That style is a liability for someone like you."
He stopped spinning the blade, catching the hilt in his newly formed hand. He held it out, not as a threat, but as an exhibit.
"Normally, I'd scold you for such a sloppy disarm. But…" A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Akame's lips. It wasn't cruel. It was the smile of a master looking at a talented, hopelessly lost student. "Since I'm in a rare teaching mood… how about I show you what a real sword style looks like?"
He lowered into a stance—a simple, grounded, utterly foundational iaido posture. The air around him didn't crackle with energy. It stillened, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
"Come on, First Sword," Akame said, his green eyes locking onto Neil's. "Show me what you've learned."
TO BE CONTINUED!