One word.
It was only one word spoken on a ragged breath, yet its impact inside the tense warehouse was more powerful than any explosion. "Akame..."
Time seemed to stop. Ryukyu's furious roar, ready to pounce, caught in her throat. Nejire's downward dive stalled in mid-air, her energy wings pulsing with confusion. Before me, Akame was frozen, the cursed sword Murasame halted just inches from my defenseless neck. Her cold, emotionless assassin's mask had been shattered, replaced by an expression of pure shock so human it made my heart ache. Her ruby eyes, once as sharp as broken glass, were now wide with total disbelief.
"What… what did you say?" she whispered, her usually steady voice trembling for the first time.
I didn't have the strength to answer. I could only look at her, trying to convey everything I couldn't say through my eyes. 'I know. I'm the same as you. You're not alone.'
"GET BACK FROM HIM, KILLER!" Ryukyu's voice finally exploded, a draconic roar that shook the entire building. She didn't care about our strange exchange; all she saw was an assassin threatening the life of her intern.
The roar jolted Akame from her shock. Her instincts, forged over two lifetimes, took over. She leaped backward, her sword returning to a ready stance, but her eyes never left me. Confusion warred with caution on her face. She was faced with an impossible puzzle: a boy who shouldn't exist, using a power that shouldn't exist, and knowing a name that should have died with her old world.
Seeing Akame return to a fighting stance, Ryukyu no longer hesitated. She swung her giant tail, a sweeping attack designed to crush anything in its path and separate Akame from me. The walls of shipping containers nearby exploded into splinters of wood and metal.
Nejire also sprang back into action, firing waves of spiral energy toward Akame's escape paths, trying to box her in.
I watched all this from the floor, my body screaming in protest. I couldn't let this happen. I couldn't let them capture her. I didn't know the details of her life in this world, but I knew the core of her character. She hunted the evil that heroes couldn't touch. She may be a killer, but she was no villain. And most importantly… she was Akame. The part of me that still remembered my old life couldn't let a character I admired so much end up in this world's prison cell.
The police sirens outside were getting closer. Time was running out.
Akame, now cornered by a giant dragon and one of U.A.'s Big Three, made a decision. Her mission to investigate me had failed. Her priority now was survival and escape. She threw several more smoke bombs, blanketing a large part of the warehouse in artificial darkness.
Ryukyu roared in frustration, batting at the smoke with her wings, but Akame used the chaos perfectly. She moved like a ghost between the shadows, heading for the only remaining exit—a large window on the second floor.
But Ryukyu had anticipated it. Even in her dragon form, she was incredibly fast. She positioned herself below the window, her mouth open, blue fire beginning to gather in her throat, ready to unleash a dragon's breath that would annihilate that escape route.
Akame was trapped. She would be hit by the attack if she continued forward.
In that moment, I did the stupidest, craziest thing in my life. Driven by an instinct I didn't fully understand—was it the remnants of my admiration from a world of fiction, or the resonance of Incursio recognizing its ally?—I had to act.
I focused the last vestiges of my consciousness, ignoring the searing pain. I reached for the dragon's heartbeat within me. 'Not to attack. Not to defend. Just to move. Give me my legs, one more time!'
With a suppressed groan, I felt Incursio's leg guards forcibly manifest around my trembling legs. Using that final burst of power, I launched myself from the floor. I didn't run towards safety. I ran straight into Ryukyu's line of fire.
"TATSUMI, NO!" I heard Nejire's horrified scream.
I leaped, placing my small, fragile body directly between Ryukyu's forming dragon's breath and the escaping Akame. It was a suicidal act.
Akame, in the process of jumping to the window, glanced back and her eyes widened when she saw what I was doing. She saw me, a boy who was supposed to be her opponent, deliberately becoming a living shield for her.
Ryukyu, seeing me jump into her line of fire, instinctively tried to stop her attack. But the energy was already gathered. She could only reduce its power, not cancel it completely. A smaller, yet still incredibly hot, wave of blue fire slammed into me.
I had no armor to protect me this time. I could only cross my arms in front of my face. The pain I felt was pure hell. It felt like my skin was melting, and the heat bored down to the bone. I was thrown across the room like a rag doll, slamming hard against a concrete wall before slumping to the floor.
But my sacrifice had worked. It gave Akame the split second she needed. With one last look filled with confusion and something else—something that almost looked like debt—she leaped out the window and disappeared into the night, just as the first police cars began to surround the warehouse.
I lay on the floor, my consciousness fading fast. The world around me became a narrowing tunnel. I could hear panicked voices. Ryukyu's roar as she returned to her human form, her voice filled with fury and fear. Nejire's scream calling my name. The heavy footsteps of police officers storming in.
Ryukyu's face appeared above me, blurry and distorted. I could see the panic in her golden eyes, something I never thought I'd see from a top hero. "What did you do, Tatsumi-kun?!" she demanded, her voice shaking. "You protected her! You let a dangerous killer escape! WHY?!"
I opened my mouth, trying to explain a reason she could never understand. I wanted to say that she wasn't an enemy. I wanted to say that there was a bigger story happening. But no sound came out. Only a soft sigh.
Darkness began to creep in at the edges of my vision. The last thing I heard before it all went black was Ryukyu's voice, no longer angry, but filled with a deep, painful confusion as she stared down at my face.
"Who... are you, really?"