Somewhere in the Faulty Tilt sprawled a vast continent called Gifu. It housed many of the Eastern Conference teams, but right now the story narrowed to one team — and more precisely, to one man. The city of Chichihaha was a futuristic sprawl where crime ran like water through cracked pipes. The sky wore perpetual night; gangs and criminals owned corners and back alleys; monsters skulked where the streetlights failed. It was not a place for comfort. It was the refuge of the desperate, the damned, and those who preferred lawlessness.
Walking those streets was a lone figure. His hair was black, thin, and long; his skin carried a faint red tint — almost pink in the right light. Black horns jutted from his forehead. A black jingasa hid his eyes, and a black kimono hung from his frame. At his waist a katana slept in a sheath banded black and red; its hilt was pitch black as a void. He moved with an odd, measured slowness, a predator that refused to hurry.
He paused when he saw an old man sitting with a bowl at the curb — a beggar.
"Money?" the beggar asked.
The swordsman turned, reached into his kimono, and drew out a sheet of paper. Ink curled across it into the fierce visage of a dragon; beneath the art was the kanji ドラゴン — dragon.
"Have you seen this dragon?" the swordsman asked, holding the paper between gloved fingers.
"A dragon?" The beggar squinted. "I haven't seen a dragon like that before! But there was a young man with a tail who went into the casino down the street."
"Thank you." The swordsman bowed once, returned the paper to his kimono, then produced a heavy stack of bills and tossed them into the beggar's bowl.
"Woah, thank you!" the older man breathed.
The swordsman kept walking without another word, but fate had a small joke ready: he tripped on his own foot and fell face-first into the grime. His jingasa clattered away, revealing startling black eyes with pale, white pupils.
"Damn…" he muttered, standing. He glanced back at the beggar, who was valiantly holding in a laugh. The swordsman sighed, set his jingasa back in place, and continued on, cheeks warm with embarrassment.
That wasn't so cool, he thought, adjusting the hat.
Then the city answered with a violence so sudden it felt like the world had been remade. Far off, a colossal pillar of fire erupted, rending the clouds and sending a shockwave tearing through Chichihaha. Windows shattered in a dozen apartment blocks; car alarms wrenched into life; the air filled with the rusty tang of burning.
The swordsman reacted without thinking. He reached and scooped the beggar and the bowl into his arms as the wave crashed over them, taking the brunt of the force himself. The jingasa was ripped free by the wind and spun away like a leaf.
"Dragon!" he shouted, the name a command as much as a question. Then he blurred — not a walk but a teleporting blink — and in a heartbeat he was where the explosion had bled into the street.
Hell had taken root there. Buildings smoldered; debris sizzled; ash drifted like funeral snow. From the smoking wreckage someone crawled out — a man aflame, his screams raw and ragged.
"He took... the... money— RAAAAAH!" the burning man yelled, voice shredded as flames consumed him. The fire grew so fierce around him that the figure dissolved into ash and ember, leaving nothing but a fine, hot dust.
The swordsman felt the heat rising, a furnace that should have been lethal. He slid his hand to the hilt of his katana and, with the economy of a blade that had decided a judgement, cut the air in a single, clean arc.
The fire vanished. It dispersed as if it had been a mirage, leaving the carnage intact but the flames gone as if they had never been.
"The dragon escaped," he said, barely louder than a breath.
Some time after that, he threaded his way through a crowded district, flashing the dragon sketch at anyone who would look. Most shook their heads and moved on. One man pointed him toward an alley, narrow and smelling of old oil. The swordsman shrugged and stepped inside, unconcerned — until the passage sealed behind him with bodies in black suits.
At the far end of the alley, seated in the shadow like a crown on a throne, was an older man in a red suit. He was Emperor Ren — the sovereign of the nation that housed Chichihaha.
"Emperor Ren…" the swordsman murmured.
Ren smiled, amusement and calculation braided together. "What a rare sight. A Faulty Tilt celebrity roaming the city before the season starts. You must be Heion Kaname Kage — or just Narmada. The superstar of the Red Tigers."
"Keep it just Narmada," the swordsman replied. "My real name is something I lost. So, Emperor Ren, you've seen the dragon?"
"The one responsible for the casino explosion? Of course. I have eyes everywhere." Ren's voice was velvet over steel. "I assume you're looking for him. I'll give you the information you want — at one condition."
Narmada inclined his head. "What is this condition, sir?"
Ren's gaze widened like a blade being drawn. "My nation is at war with the neighboring state, Fushi. I know your capabilities. I want you to go there and... eliminate them. Fushi is much larger than ours — ten times bigger, in fact. Getting rid of Fushi won't affect the Faulty Tilt; no teams are located there. You'll be trouble free. What do you say?"
"Sure thing, sir." The final word — thing — caught and cracked in his throat, and for a blink a guard almost laughed before catching the gesture and swallowing it down. Narmada turned and left the alley without another word.
Not cool at all, he thought, stepping back into the neon gutters and the perpetual night.
The sea stretched like a black mirror under a sky that had forgotten how to be gentle. Narmada floated atop a log, the wood bobbing with the lazy patience of someone who had nothing pressing to do. On his shoulder slept a white fox with three tails, curled like a ghost and breathing soft. When it opened its eyes they glowed a cobalt blue, cold and knowing.
"So, what was the thought process, Narmada?" the fox asked, voice like small waves.
Narmada let out a dry breath and squinted at the horizon. "The power of red really gives you tunnel vision," he said, blunt and unbothered.
"Yeah, sure. You said you were going to destroy an entire nation, right?" the fox prodded.
"Yeah," Narmada nodded. "After I do that I'll get more intel on the dragon."
"Why do you insist on calling the rookie the dragon?" the fox asked, unnervingly frank.
"I've never seen something so beastly in my life," Narmada replied, the memory still sharp in his chest.
"You've never seen a western dragon-born before. They're vicious," the fox countered.
Narmada folded his hands in his lap. "I think our GM just got unlucky this year. Wouldn't you say we had a cool little theme going with our team?"
"We did draft a monkey," the fox observed, flat.
"But we couldn't draft an eastern dragon-born?" Narmada pushed back, half-serious.
"I'm not sure if any were even in the draft," the fox said.
"What about that one—" Narmada began, but the world answered with a horn.
A low, gargantuan horn bellowed across the water, a metallic blur that vibrated in the bones. The fox's ears twitched. "It seems like you have company," it said.
Where the sound came from, a leviathan of steel rose out of the ocean: a cruise ship so vast its stern vanished into haze and its bow could have been a neighborhood. It towered like an iron cliff. Painted along its side in cheerful letters was: The Island Cruise. Speakers from the ship cut through the air and scolded them both.
"Turn right around," the recorded voice ordered, flat and mechanical.
Narmada closed his eyes, hand flattening over the hilt at his waist. He sighed. "This is gonna be cool." He pushed himself to his feet on the log with a balance that looked almost casual.
"You will be shot down. Last warning," the speaker snapped.
"Looks like they clearly can't see who they're up against," the fox murmured, eyes narrowing.
"And they never will," Narmada said.
From the flank of the ship two massive rotating minigun barrels unfurled like the mouths of ancient beasts. They barked in a tongue of brass and fury, releasing a hellish spray of bullets that merged into blinding streams—so fast they looked like streaks of light.
Narmada's hand tightened on his katana. As the deadly ribbons closed to within ten meters of him, they disappeared without warning, fizzling out as if someone had drawn a line in the air and declared the bullets done.
"Hmph," Narmada said, a grin ghosting his lips. "I'm cutting the bullets so fast that it looks like I have some barrier around myself. Cool, right?" He glanced at the fox, fishing for praise.
"You know, it's cooler if you don't explain it," the fox replied, unimpressed.
"Fair," Narmada conceded.
"What— WHAT ARE YOU!?" the speaker demanded, panic finally fraying the mechanical tone.
Narmada tipped an invisible hat. "I'm a certified badass!"
"That's not a very badass thing to say..." the fox muttered.
"You're ruining the moment!" Narmada snapped, half-annoyed and half-amused.
The guns shrieked, their rotating barrels glowing white-hot. Metal protested, then gave up—overheated and silent.
Narmada drew his katana in a lazy, graceful motion. The blade flashed white as bone. Without hesitating he swung; the motion was a whisper and a verdict at once. The sheath snapped back in place with an audible click, but not before the already-sliced surface of the ship betrayed what his strike had done. Whatever path the blade had taken continued through steel like a thought continued through sleep: the entire ship was cleaved, first vertically until it opened like a shell, then horizontally in successive, impossible slashes. The vessel's enormous bulk unraveled in a rain of metal, broken into shimmering, falling geometry until nothing sensible remained.
Narmada settled back onto his log as if he had only leaned forward and scratched his nose.
The fox, blunt as ever, cocked its head. "I wonder how many people you killed on that boat."
"Enough people," Narmada said plainly.
"You know you sound cold saying that," the fox chided.
"I am cold!" Narmada snapped.
"Need a blanket?" the fox offered, tone light and deliberately unhelpful.
Narmada lifted the fox and dunked its head under the water. The little body thrashed; fur matted with sea. He pulled it back up, the animal gasping and shaking, furious and alive.
"Anything else to say?" Narmada asked, letting the fox shake itself dry.
The fox spluttered, blinking indignantly. "I don't think I do." Narmada set it back on his shoulder, where it promptly curled and resumed its nap.
Hours bled by; the log drifted and drifted until a peculiar sight rose on the horizon: a vast, pink barrier arcing upward like a flawed dome of light. The fox — who had finally given in to sleep — stirred, blinking its cobalt gaze open.
"Jun Kuramiko... what's that?" Narmada asked, voice low with curiosity.
The fox—whose name was YES Jun Kuramiko—stretched and scanned the wall of light. "It appears that we are here," Jun said, voice flat as she blinked awake.
Narmada slid a hand to the hilt of his sword, eyes narrowing. "What's this barrier?"
"Fushi has a protective barrier around its nation," Jun explained, as if reciting a fact. "This barrier is literally another dimension used as a shield to block anything outside of it. That means if you want to destroy that barrier, you have to wipe out an entire dimension." She folded back down and dozed again, as if the explanation were lecture and the lecture finished.
Narmada let the words sit like a cool stone. "Sounds easy enough."
Jun huffed, unamused. "Of course you would say that."
Narmada shrugged, the corner of his mouth twitching. "It's true, though."
Jun leapt from his shoulder and landed behind him with a soft pat. She closed her eyes again as if the world could politely wait.
"Just cut the dang dimensional barrier in half," she ordered, voice clipped.
"You didn't have to ask twice." Narmada drew his katana with a smooth, practiced motion.
He named it, low and solemn. "I call upon you, my sword, Commodity." He shut his eyes, centering himself.
"With the power of black…" The sentence became an incantation. Black spilled from him—hair, eyes, the fabric of his kimono—like oil separating from water. The darkness peeled away and flowed into the blade, tinting the steel pure midnight. It drank the blackness until the sword itself wept ink, droplets of shadow clinging to the edge and dripping with an otherworldly gloom.
"My soul is given to the black, now, my blade Commodity—"
"JUST CUT THE DANG THING!!!" Jun's shout cut him off.
"FINE!!!" Narmada snapped. He slashed once—quick, precise—toward the horizon. For a breath it seemed as if nothing had happened at all; the world held its breath and then resumed.
"Give it a sec..." he muttered.
"I'm not even watching—" Jun began, but she didn't get to finish. Where seconds before there had been an impenetrable dome of rosy light, the barrier split. It separated with surgical cleanliness: the pink wall cleaved in two, the ocean before it parting as if a colossal knife had driven through the water. Beyond that, distant land severed in the same immaculate line.
"Goodbye, Fushi." Narmada watched as, where the cut touched reality, a vast black maw appeared. A large, yawning hole of nothingness opened, and the sea itself slid toward that void. He snatched Jun up and the log beneath them shuddered; in the instant before the abyss consumed everything nearby, he leapt—propelled by momentum and will—high into the air.
"That should be long enough." Mid-flight he lashed the katana through the black aperture. The rift cleansly halved; both pieces collapsed inward, rolling into the blade like smoke into a closed lantern. They vanished. He resheathed Commodity. The spilled black that had animated him snapped back onto his body, as if some invisible seam stitched him whole again.
Before the log hit the water, Jun wrenched free from his grasp. Light flared around her, flesh and fur contorting in a ripple of power. When the radiance dissipated she was no longer a tiny fox but a woman—a tall, arresting figure in a purple kimono. Her hair fell white and long around a pair of crystalline blue eyes. Her fox-ears melted seamlessly into the silk of her hair; her nine tails were no more. She strode to the log and touched down with the quiet authority of someone who owned the sea for that moment. Beneath her feet the ocean froze, forming a glassy platform that held her weight. She reached a hand out and gently lowered Narmada back to the surface.
"Good call," he said, steadying himself. They both peered down at the aftermath the black hole left behind: a bottomless pit into which the water had poured like a river into an oubliette.
"I wonder how deep it goes," Jun mused.
"You can go check," Narmada offered.
"Yeah, whatever. Let's go find that rookie." Jun walked forward, each stride cracking the sea into electric ice; the frozen track she made hissed and static snapped through the air. Narmada followed. All along the path, the bloated and charred bodies of hundreds of sea creatures rose—tiny fish to hulking leviathans—cooked as if by an impossible, sudden heat. They bobbed up and floated like the grisly spoils of a drowned banquet.
Far inland on the continent of Gifu, inside a bright casino, a blackjack table hummed with tension. At its head sat Cobre Zalas, sunglasses low and a mountain of chips piled before him.
"All in," he said, pushing his stack forward with a calmness that looked rehearsed.
The dealer dealt with slick hands: two to himself, two to Cobre. Cobre's cards were a king of hearts and an eight of spades. The dealer's face-up card was a five of hearts.
18... I pretty much win. What are the chances this dealer pulls out anything above an 18? Cobre thought, smug and certain.
"I stand!" he declared.
The dealer revealed his facedown card: a six of diamonds. He drew a card. The table watched as a queen of hearts slid into place. Cobre's grip tightened on his sunglasses; smoke threaded from his mouth in a lazy curl. Then—without warning—an inferno erupted from his body. Flames consumed the room in an instant, an explosion of heat and orange that should have killed everyone inside.
And yet Cobre walked through the conflagration unharmed, his composure unruffled. He moved through the carnage with the detached ease of a man who expected obedience from the world and received it. He found a safe and lifted it as if it weighed no more than a dinner tray.
"The perfect power fantasy. I can do whatever I want without anyone stopping me—" he began, voice a smug whisper of entitlement.
Something interrupted him. The flames around him stilled and froze as if a hand had passed through time and stopped it. He turned, surprised. In a blink—so fast it might as well have been teleportation—Jun stood before him. She pressed a palm to his chest and, with a white flash and crackle of cold, his torso locked in ice, rimed and electric, frozen solid like a statue.
Narmada's silhouette cut across the smoky air as he stepped into the scene.
Narmada watched the ice melt away like breath on glass. The frozen shell that had encased Cobre wept and thinned until the heat reclaimed him.
"Are you sure that'll hold him?" Narmada asked, voice taut with cautious hope.
"Why wouldn't it?" Jun replied, nonchalant as ever.
"Well—" Narmada started, but the thought was cut short when the ice liquefied and slid free.
Jun's brow creased with interest. "Interesting. He wasn't even burned by my electricity…"
Cobre opened his mouth and said, calmly and without bravado, "No form of heat can burn me."
Narmada's eyes narrowed. "Damn. Do all western dragon-born have this kind of control over fire?"
Jun folded her hands, speaking with the clipped, precise tone of someone reciting field notes. "No. That's one of the big differences between eastern and western dragon-born. Western dragon-born don't tend to manipulate and freely produce their element the way eastern dragon-born do — their element comes from their mouths. This has something to do with his gimmick."
Cobre cut in, impatient. "You talk too much. I don't like you."
Jun's reply was a cool shrug. "Well, I'm not talking to you; you can ignore me."
"Will do." Cobre punctuated the promise with a lazy thumbs-up.
Narmada stepped forward, intent, and asked the practical question. "So, what does this gimmick do?"
Jun glanced at the ruined tableau of the casino and answered with the kind of clarity that made facts feel like weapons. "From all of the reports about him, his gimmick lets him freely manipulate the heat of things. As long as something possesses heat, he can raise or lower that heat without limit. Normally, dragon-born have slight resistances to their element, but because of his gimmick, he's gained complete immunity to heat."
"So he's been causing giant heat eruptions…" Narmada murmured, the deduction landing like a stone.
Cobre scoffed. "Jeez, you're just gonna expose my entire gimmick just like that? Ever heard of show, not tell, pendejos?"
Narmada's patience thinned. "I could care less. You're heading back to the base, one way or another." He slid into a stance, fingers brushing the hilt of his katana as he unsheathed it with a silent, threatening whisper.
"Tch," Cobre clicked, amused. "I guess it's that time in the story to see if the underdog is stronger than the proclaimed strongest in his newly joined team."
Narmada blinked, incredulous. "What?"
Cobre's smile was easy, arrogant. "You're dealing with the true hero here."