John walked barefoot down the freezing underground corridor in his pure cotton pajamas.
His steps were light, so light that even the most sensitive acoustic sensors couldn’t pick them up.
He’d heard Leon say today that Sector D of the underground base was the area used specifically to hold and interrogate outside intruders.
A few minutes later, John arrived at the door of a maximum-security interrogation room in the deepest part of Sector D.
The two heavily armed guards on watch at the door saw the blond little boy and were so startled they nearly let their weapons go off.
“Te…
test subject!
Why are you here?
This is a restricted zone!” the guard stammered, his hands shaking.
John didn’t look at them.
He only spoke calmly.
“Open the door.”
“But the supervisor’s orders…”
John tilted his head slightly, no ripple of emotion in his deep blue eyes, only the pure way someone above looks down on someone below.
“Open the door.
Or I’ll melt it along with both of you.”
The guard swallowed, and with trembling hands pressed the open key on the console.
The heavy pressure door slid slowly open.
Inside the interrogation room, an old Japanese man with graying hair, dressed in a tattered kimono, hung in midair from special titanium alloy chains.
He was covered in blood, clearly having just been through a brutal interrogation.
This was Takeda, the head of the Japanese onmyoji who had caused the trouble in San Francisco.
Hearing the door open, Takeda weakly lifted his head.
When he saw that the one who had walked in was a six-year-old foreign boy in pajamas and bare feet, his withered lips pulled into a mocking sneer.
“What’s this?
Have those barbarians at Vought, who don’t even understand magic, sunk so low they’re sending a nursing infant to interrogate me?”
Takeda jeered in hoarse English.
John walked up in front of Takeda and frowned in distaste.
There was a foul, bloody stink coming off the old man that reminded him of that monster that sprayed acid.
“You understand a lot of things I don’t.”
John’s voice echoed in the empty interrogation room.
“Leon says you people don’t need Compound V, that you can get power on your own.”
Takeda paused, then broke into wild, unrestrained laughter.
“Hahahaha!
Who’s Leon?
One of your Vought researchers?
That’s right, we command the onmyo arts that commune with heaven, earth, and the spirits!
It’s a great power you defective products, forced into being by serum, will never comprehend!
Even in death, I will never tell you capitalists’ running dogs the secret of the scrolls!”
Takeda put on a great show of righteous defiance, the very picture of a man ready to meet death without flinching.
John listened quietly to the end, then cocked his head.
“I don’t want your secret.
And I don’t want to give that thing to the company.”
John took a step forward, his clean blue eyes looking especially deep in the dim light.
“Tell me, that power of yours, how does an ordinary adult with no talent learn it?
I want to give this power to Leon.”
“An ordinary person?
A common mortal with no spiritual energy can’t even sense the existence of spirits, and you’d presumptuously try to learn the onmyo arts?
It’s a pipe dream, plain and simple!
Kid, you’d better kill me right now, or else…”
Takeda’s threat never made it out.
His voice cut off short.
John didn’t use his signature heat vision.
His small body swayed slightly, and at a super speed the naked eye could barely catch, he crossed several meters in a blink and stood directly in front of Takeda.
He slowly extended that soft little hand and gripped the knee of Takeda’s right leg, the one hung in midair by the chains.
A sharp crack.
A teeth-grating burst of sound went off in the interrogation room.
Even though John looked to have given it no more than an offhand squeeze, the kneecap of Takeda’s leg was still ground into powder under that absolute physical force.
“Aaaaaagh!!!”
Takeda let out a squeal like a stuck pig, his whole weathered face contorting with agony.
The onmyoji dignity he’d prided himself on collapsed under the crush of absolute violence.
John kept that same calm, innocent, even faintly obedient expression.
He remembered Leon’s teaching: with bad guys, pull your punches, break the legs.
“I just learned a new word today.
It’s called ’empathy.'”
John watched Takeda twitching all over with pain, his tone earnest as if reciting a school text.
“Leon says you have to feel other people’s pain.
You’re in a lot of pain right now, aren’t you?”
Takeda gasped in great heaving breaths, staring in terror at the devil of a child in front of him.
John slowly raised his hand, aiming through the empty air at Takeda’s other leg.
“I don’t want to feel your pain.
I only want to know how to make Leon stronger.
If there’s no method in this world that can make him stronger, then dangerous types like you, who might threaten him, I’ll just have to clear away at the source, all of you.”
There was no rise or fall in John’s voice, as natural as if he were discussing what to have for breakfast tomorrow.
“Last chance.
Ordinary people, how do they get power?”
“Aaaaaagh!!!”
Takeda’s screams echoed in the heavily soundproofed interrogation room, shrill and despairing.
He stared hard at the devil of a blond boy in front of him, the contempt and arrogance in his eyes now utterly replaced by fear.
John showed no flicker of expression.
He even gave his hand a disgusted shake to fling off the little bit of blood that had gotten on it.
“Answer my question.”
John’s deep blue eyes looked cold to the bone in the dim light.
“Ordinary people, how do they get stronger.
My patience is down to the last ten seconds.
Ten, nine…”
“I’ll talk!
I’ll talk!!”
Takeda broke.
Facing Vought’s brutal torture, he could still hold out on the strength of his fervor for his faith and his power. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
But facing a monster child who wouldn’t listen to reason at all, who could crush him to pieces with a casual motion, and who didn’t care in the slightest about any balance of power between factions, that pitiful pride of his crumbled to dust.
“That thing…
the thing we were fighting over in San Francisco!
That spirit artifact handed down from an old master craftsman of our order!”
Takeda gasped in big breaths, his words spilling out fast.
“It’s a ‘Yasakani Blood Jade’!
It doesn’t require the user to have any inborn talent at all!
Just bind it with a drop of blood, and the blood jade will automatically absorb the free energy around it and feed it back to the host!”
John stopped his countdown.
“Feed it back to the host?
Can it make him as strong as me?”
“No…
it can’t make him like you!”
Takeda hissed through the pain and hurried to explain.
“But when the host runs into deadly danger, it can throw up a blood-energy barrier that can stop even armor-piercing rounds!
It can also greatly strengthen an ordinary person’s body and slow aging!
It’s the top-grade protective spirit artifact an ordinary person can use!”
John’s eyes brightened a little.
Stop armor-piercing rounds, strengthen the body.
That was exactly what Leon needed most.
“Where is that blood jade now?” John asked.
“It was…
it was taken by one of you Vought superheroes!
Right there in that San Francisco clash, Black Noir brought it back to your headquarters!”
Takeda’s whole face was crushed with defeat.
John nodded.
Since the thing was inside the company, that made it easy.
He turned around, ready to leave the interrogation room.
Seeing this little devil was finally about to go, Takeda let out a long breath, thinking he’d managed to keep his life after all.
But when John reached the door, he stopped short.
“Leon taught me that when you do something wrong, you have to be punished.
You’re a bad guy, and you were rude to me just now.”
John didn’t turn around.
He only swept one hand back in a backhand motion.
A sonic boom went off in the air!
A terrifying gust of force the naked eye couldn’t catch crossed several meters and struck Takeda’s remaining left leg with precision.
A thud.
The knee of Takeda’s left leg burst straight into a cloud of bloody mist.
“With both legs broken, you can’t run out and break the rules.”
John left that one satisfied remark behind, walked out of the interrogation room without looking back, and offhandedly pulled the heavy pressure door shut again.
The two guards outside had already collapsed limp on the ground in fright, not daring even to glance at him.
John, like he was strolling through his own backyard garden, barefoot, with light, brisk steps, vanished at the far end of the corridor.