"As for time... in Junji Ito's manga Blackbird, that blackbird who can only turn into a human woman also has the power to cross time and space."
In other words, all he had to do was find the Blackbird, and the Tomie Network would gain a Tomie who could travel through time.
For all he knew she already existed at some point in the future, and simply hadn't come back, either because there was no need to interfere in this particular era or for some other reason entirely.
"As for the drain..."
Amamiya Rin started to speak, then stopped.
He had an idea. But with the Tomies as they were now, turning that idea into reality would be difficult.
Tomie caught the shape of the thought in his head and rolled her eyes at him again.
"It's fine. Ultraseven's setting includes absorbing solar energy. As long as I don't throw around beam techniques for no reason, daytime endurance won't be too short."
With a soft sigh, Amamiya Rin swallowed the idea that would have earned him nothing but jeering from every Tomie present. [Remember this site's domain, ttks.tw, for daily novels to cure your reading drought — the most complete collection around]
While Amamiya Rin was busy kneading light between his bare hands, elsewhere, at the Takaichi residence, dozens of armored vehicles had sealed the estate off completely. Fully armed soldiers used the vehicles as cover and set up firing positions.
Rotors thundered overhead. Three helicopters closed in from different directions, floodlights pinning the main house from every angle, six autocannons hanging beneath them and ready to speak.
This was far past anything ordinary police work called for. It showed exactly how seriously the so-called gods took the killer who had murdered one of their own — and how desperately they wanted to keep breathing.
Beside the command vehicle, a middle-aged man in a black suit pressed a hand to his earpiece and stared at the estate's grim silhouette against the night, brow knotted, confusion and anxiety written all over him.
"How the hell did the killer get inside?"
That was what baffled him most. So many people had been posted around the property, and not a word had come through until the killer struck. Were the guards and the plainclothes officers all blind?
Any potential attacker should have been intercepted on the approach. Instead the killer had cut a path straight into the Takaichi residence, and now not only the powerbrokers of business, politics and religion had fallen, but the Soul Reviver as well.
"Report. All entrances, exits and surrounding high ground are locked down. Radio intercepts show no outbound communication from inside the estate. Based on thermal imaging and optical observation, the target and the hostages are most likely in the central main hall area."
His subordinate's report brought the Superintendent-General back to himself. He ground his teeth, sweat beading across his forehead.
Every hostage in that house was a figure of roughly his own rank, and that was setting aside the Soul Reviver, whose safety touched interests no one dared name aloud. A single casualty would mean losses and responsibility he could never absorb, never survive.
Just then, the other phone in his inside pocket began to vibrate — the encrypted line that ran straight to the top.
He walked off into the shadows a short distance away and answered.
"Status."
The voice on the other end wasn't loud, but it carried an authority that brooked no argument. And yet, to the Superintendent-General's ear, that authority sounded — rarely — a little thin. A little frightened.
They had every reason to be. If the Soul Reviver died, everyone who had received life force from him would die too, and among the powerbrokers who called themselves gods, seven of every ten from the older generation were alive today only through his power.
If the Soul Reviver died, a great swath of seats among the gods would empty overnight, and the political world of this country would convulse.
"The target building is fully sealed. We're evaluating entry options, but there are multiple important figures inside, along with the Soul Reviver. The risk of a forced assault—"
The Superintendent-General answered at once.
"The others' lives are secondary."
The voice cut him off, cold and urgent.
"The Soul Reviver's safety is the absolute line. He comes out alive and unharmed. If anything happens to him, you understand the consequences."
"...Understood. I'll do everything in my power. The Soul Reviver's safety comes first."
A chill crawled up the Superintendent-General's spine and he agreed immediately.
"Go. Report results to me directly."
The line went dead. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, strode back to the command vehicle, and waved over the head of the Special Countermeasures Division.
"Has the negotiation team arrived?"
"They're here, standing by."
"Send them in now. Open talks with the killer."
"And our limits?"
"There are none. If the hostages are released, agree to any condition at all... The others are a smokescreen. The gentleman in the white kariginu robe is the only objective."
"What?"
The division head's eyes went wide, shock plain on his face.
"Did I not make myself clear?"
The Superintendent-General gave him a cold look, his tone unusually severe.
"No. I'll see to it at once," the division head said quickly, nodding.
The order went down fast. Several negotiation specialists in body armor moved toward the main hall under the cover of an armed squad.
At the same time, a six-man elite team slipped in from the flank and rear of the estate, using the night and the shadows of the buildings.
Inside the main hall, Swordmaster Tomie sat cross-legged amid the wreckage, the Soul Reviver's Sword laid across her knees.
Her eyes were shut, her breathing long and slow. Every inhalation seemed to drain the air around her; every exhalation carried a scalding white mist.
To master this blade — or rather, to master the abundant life force inside it — Swordmaster Tomie had deliberately entered deep Dhyana.
The aura around her settled by degrees. Her awareness drew inward, and the noise of the outside world receded fast, turning blurred and distant.
But her Dhyana was not the clear emptiness of Amamiya Rin's.
Hers was more like the focus before a draw. Thought itself was an edge, and it cut every stray notion away.
That blade-sharp intent began in the motor cortex and carved downward along one neural circuit after another, as if opening the body up: skin, muscle, bone, viscera. The body stopped being a vague whole and became a landscape of internal vision, as precise as anatomy and somehow beyond it.
And then she saw it.
Something vast, so vast it was nearly brimming over, lay dormant in every part of her.
It was not flesh, not blood, not the current running through nerves. It was vitality. A feeling of being alive — something older and fuller than any of that.
It was like warm light, or like flowing mercury, hoarded silently in the deepest parts of her frame, seeping slowly through every inch of flesh and every gap between bones. Staggering in its volume, yet strangely docile, simply existing, like an ocean asleep.
This was the life force the Soul Reviver's Sword had plundered.
Her Breathing Method turned of its own accord. The rhythm of the Crimson Lotus Breathing Method drove her chest and diaphragm, forming an inner cadence.
On the inhale, she visualized the life force drawn like a tide from every part of her toward the dantian.
On the exhale, she visualized that gathered life force flowing naturally along the channel of her breath into the trunk of her body.
First attempt: failure.
The life force stirred lazily and most of it stayed exactly where it was.
Second attempt: slightly better.
A small amount followed the rhythm of her breath, rising and falling in irregular swells.
Third attempt: she pushed too hard, and a wave of white light burst out of Swordmaster Tomie's mouth.
Fourth, fifth, sixth...
There were many failures, but Swordmaster Tomie felt no impatience, because the life force truly was responding to her breath.
That much was only natural. In Soul Reviver's Sword, life force injected into a body behaved like a part of that body, reacting to its movements; when the host grew too agitated, the life force escaped through the mouth.
But that crude method was not what Swordmaster Tomie wanted. She wanted precision. She wanted the life force to move by her will, under her command.
The Contemplative Sight realm opened fully, and Sword Intent, keen as a blade, swept every minute change in her body as she breathed.
Soon she found her opening: the rhythm of the breath itself.
With nearly a century of Breathing Method training behind her, Swordmaster Tomie changed that rhythm on purpose — no longer the explosive cadence of the Crimson Lotus Breathing Method, not quite the airy stillness of the Six Wondrous Gates, but a distinct rhythm somewhere between the two.
On the inhale, intent became invisible thread, tugging gently at that dormant life force, drawing it from the deepest recesses of her organs and gathering it slowly into her trunk.
On the exhale, intent guided the small mass she had gathered up along her spine, through the back of her neck, into her brain, then slowly down again, spreading out toward her limbs.
Wherever the life force passed it left a strange warmth and strength behind, a solid sense of fullness, like a dry riverbed soaked through by fresh spring water.
Time lost meaning in deep Dhyana.
Perhaps a few minutes passed. Perhaps half an hour.
The Soul Reviver's Sword across her knees seemed to sense the circulation of life force smoothing out inside her. The gentle white glow along the blade shifted and turned, faintly matching the rhythm of her breathing.
The damaged sliding door of the main hall was eased open, and two negotiation specialists stepped through under the protection of four riot officers with shields.
They saw Swordmaster Tomie at once.
Even seated, her exaggerated musculature and horn-hardened skin pressed down on the room in the dim light. Her eyes were closed; she gave no reaction to the intruders at all. Only her chest rose and fell in steady rhythm, and the short sword on her knees was wrapped in a white radiance that swelled and ebbed as though answering her breath.
The negotiation team leader cleared his throat and raised both hands to show he was harmless, keeping his voice as level as he could.
"We're the negotiation team from the Metropolitan Police Department. Please stay calm. We mean you no harm. We can discuss terms — guarantee the hostages' safety, and anything you want is open to negotiation."
Swordmaster Tomie didn't move, didn't open her eyes. There was only that steady breathing and the heat riding on it.
The second specialist edged half a step forward, his tone even softer. "We understand you may have demands of your own. Guarantee the hostages' safety and everything's on the table. Money, a safe route out of the country, even a pardon — we can talk about all of it."
Not so much as an eyelid twitched. Her breathing hung heavy in the silent hall.
The team leader traded a glance with his partner and tried again. "A standoff helps nobody. The perimeter outside is completely sealed. But if you cooperate, we can guarantee you leave safely."
Still silence.
The specialist beside him was fraying. He lowered his voice. "Can she even hear us? Or is she stalling?"
The leader shook his head and signaled him to be patient.
He raised his voice a little, trying to break that eerie stillness. "At least give us some response! A nod, a shake of the head — anything! We need to know what you want!"
And that was when it came.
"Heh heh."
A soft laugh, from the shadows along the side of the main hall.
It wasn't loud, but it had a strange penetrating quality, like a feather brushing the eardrum, like a fine needle sliding into a nerve.
The negotiators and the officers all turned their heads at once.
Someone was leaning there in the darkness. None of them had seen her arrive.
Mara Tomie.
Her long hair hung loose, and she was idly winding a strand around one fingertip. She struck no particular pose, simply stood there and let her gaze drift over them.
And in the instant that gaze made contact—
Two negotiation specialists and four shield officers froze mid-motion, all at once.
Their eyes widened, pupils blowing open on their own. Their breathing stopped for a beat, then turned heavy.
The professional wariness melted off their faces like snow, and what replaced it was blankness shot through with daze, infatuation and raw craving.
The corner of Mara Tomie's mouth curved. She walked two steps forward, into slightly brighter light.
Her eyes moved over each slack face, and she spoke softly, lazily. "What's all the noise about? That child needs quiet."
"S-sorry," the team leader apologized almost on reflex. "We didn't mean to disturb—"
"Please, forgive me. If you'll forgive me, I'll do anything, anything at all!"
The other specialist's gaze had fastened onto Mara Tomie's cheek and would not come loose. A flush of obsession spread across his face. He hurried toward her, hand outstretched to touch.
"Could you stop right there? I hate it when other men touch me. My darling would get jealous."
Mara Tomie tilted her head, her smile deepening, and there was nothing hidden about the cruelty of the play in it.
"Darling...!"
The faces of the specialists and the officers twisted. In that instant a terrible murderous urge erupted inside them — the compulsion to kill whoever this darling was, whatever the cost, however impossible the price.
And the moment that thought formed, another rose alongside it: that the beautiful woman before them must never, under any circumstances, be made unhappy.
The two impulses collided and ground against each other, torturing their minds. Their expressions shifted moment to moment, faces flushing red, then going iron-grey, an unsettling sight.
Mara Tomie clasped her hands behind her back and strolled up in front of them.
"How pitiful. Like puppets on strings... Still, there's no need to think about any of that now."
Her voice was soft and yielding, laced with a thread of pity, and it soaked into their minds like venom.
"Don't think about anything. Don't reason about anything. Become my slaves — then you'll be happy."
Her gaze passed over their eyes one by one, and every man she looked at shivered faintly, a nearly blissful flush rising in his face.
A few sentences were all it took. The negotiation team had fallen completely.
____
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