I Love You, Anastasia.
Sword met a man in a Russian bar.
A strange man. From the instant he stepped through the door, Sword felt a dread he could not name. Everyone else in the place behaved as if the man did not exist at all. The bartender who had been babbling nonsense at him, the person he had been talking with only a moment before—neither of them showed the slightest reaction. Only Sword perceived him.
Sword stared at the man. No—at something he could not even be sure was a man. Ransack his memory as he might, the figure would not come back to him. Only black darkness stood where a face should have been.
The darkness took the seat beside him. He ordered a whiskey from the bartender, and the bartender carried out the command like a machine. Watching that same bartender smile and chat with another patron, Sword felt his skin crawl. The man never spoke when an order came in. Never. The contradiction set Sword's survival instinct ringing like an alarm.
He paid the bartender and started to rise.
“Where are you going, Alexei?”
When the darkness called him, Sword had no choice but to stop. He could not move a single step. Move, and that instant would be death. Death was sitting beside him.
“I would like a word……. Do you have a moment?”
A white line within the darkness drew a long arc. A smile, most likely. Cold sweat running, Sword sat back down. He ordered a drink to cool himself. This time the bartender said nothing.
“There is something I would like to commission you for…….”
The darkness threw back the whiskey. Caught inside the dark, it vanished, glass and all.
“Will you hear it?”
The moment the darkness heaved, no one remained in the bar but Sword and the darkness. As if no one had ever been there at all.
Sword could not refuse him. And when he heard the commission, he became a ghost shackled to the past.
KRA-KOOM!
If an earthquake went off right in front of his eyes, would it feel like this? No. Earthquakes come out of the ground, not out of empty air.
KRA-KOOM!
Then what was he supposed to call this? A sonic boom? A volcanic eruption? A meteor strike?
KRAAAAA-KOOM!
One thing he could swear. If this fight had happened in the distant past—
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KOOM!
—it would have deserved, and then some, to be written down as myth.
KRAK!
A fiend and a transcendent crashed together. With every collision the surroundings shattered, and the civilization humanity had built fell back by centuries at a stroke. Already nothing nearby still stood with any pride.
“I never thought it would come to this!”
“Sword doped out of his mind, and Dan Miryu walking in with the Stone of Resurrection and awakening—none of it was on the schedule!”
“I don't care how you spin it, slamming three of the D-series doesn't even make sense!”
The D-series: enhancement drugs made by the Black Curtain, their effect bought with your life as collateral. What Sword had injected was probably D-2. The side effects were savage, and the power matched them. In the original, Sword had taken the D-series' help once, when he killed Dan Miryu, and once more when he stood against the protagonist.
“But three?! He took three of them?!”
One dose, and you could scarcely find anyone fit to face him. He had shoveled down three. Remember that from D-1 onward the drug was not enhancement but transformation, and Sword had reached the highest ground a human being could stand.
“Does he not even care if he lives?!”
A single D-2 and you were already weighing wreck against corpse. Three, and death was certain. But ironically, he could take three only because he was Sword. Anyone else would have lost their mind on one. That he had taken three and still held them under control proved just how vast a power he had been.
KRA-KOOM!
“Aaaagh!”
The shockwave of a mere clash felt like it was grinding his bones to powder. Thank god Dan Miryu had healed him with the power of the Stone of Resurrection. If he hadn't, he'd already be dead.
“And what the hell is Dan Miryu doing!”
He had known the man was strong, but Dan Miryu wielding the Stone of Resurrection was the first he had ever heard of it. There had been no mention that the Dan clan could use the stone. Not a crumb of foreshadowing. In the comic, the Stone of Resurrection sat at exactly the level of a healing potion—no more, no less. Bring the dead back too often and the tension dies, so it had barely appeared at all.
“By the lore, sure, this tracks!”
A near-infinite power dwelt in the Stone of Resurrection. Know how to use it, and displaying the authority of a god was not impossible.
“So why are you the one using it, Dan Miryuuu!!!”
When whales fight, it's the shrimp whose back splits!
He tumbled through the aftermath, rolled and rolled, slammed into something, and only then barely stopped. Rubbing his head, he looked at what he had hit. A barrier, shining green.
“What is this?”
The barrier enclosed the whole area.
“Did Dan Miryu put this up?”
Because of it, the battle's shock no longer reached any farther. He had probably raised it out of worry for the civilians. He looked up at the fight unfolding overhead. Red light and green light drew lines and collided—a battle so fast that not even a faint outline could be seen. Anyone without the standing for it could not so much as watch.
Not being able to see the fight was maddening, but he wasn't worried. If Dan Miryu was using the Stone of Resurrection, this was a fight he absolutely could not lose. A power that gnaws on life cannot overcome life itself. Even if Sword won, Dan Miryu would never die.
“Haa. I'm dead.”
Any popcorn around here?
Sword looked at the Stone of Resurrection blazing at Dan Miryu's throat. A warm light: awe at a glance, and a softness that settled over the heart.
With only that, I can bring my daughter back.
She had died of his foolishness, of his wrong. Dead so young—how bitter she must have been. How she must have resented this sorry excuse for a father. He had not even been able to give her a proper funeral. All he could do was take revenge, and everyone tied to her death met their end only after they had seen a hell worse than hell. What remained to him was useless strength, and the money he had saved for his daughter.
Ah, Anastasia. You asked if Daddy loved you?
His daughter, wearing the fire, had asked. Did you love me?
Loved you, and how. More than anyone in this world.
When you come home, there's so much I've already planned. How about an amusement park? Something delicious? Or a movie, you and Daddy together? So let's go home.
“The Stone of Resurrection can return a person to life. Even a figure from the past who left not so much as a corpse.”
Daddy can do anything, if it is for you.
“There is a Stone of Resurrection in Korea. Bring it back, and you can save your daughter.”
Even if—
“No. Not that alone. You could give your daughter eternal life, and live together forever.”
Then that.
“Take this with you. The Guardian who keeps the Stone of Resurrection is no weakling. Use it when you are desperate. The side effects are severe, but it is a drug that grants tremendous power even to a powerhouse such as yourself.”
Even if it is a bargain with the devil.
“Only not all of it. I cannot guarantee your life.”
“Alexei. I hope you are able to meet your daughter.”
Dan Miryu stared at the fiend before his eyes. The fiend hung in the sky as if suspended there, bleeding. The killing intent that had poured forth as if to blot out the heavens was long gone, and in the fiend's hand remained a sword reduced to its grip alone. Not a single wound marked Dan Miryu's body. The fiend was dying.
“A… na… sta… sia…”
The sight of him stirred Dan Miryu's pity.
If I lost my child, would I become like that?
He didn't know. A feeling like that was not something you could claim to share just because you thought you understood it. He could not begin to imagine what would become of him if he lost his only child.
Even so, that does not forgive what he has done.
The man had meant to take the Stone of Resurrection by any means necessary, and for that the city had been laid to waste. If Dan Miryu had not brought the stone, the dead would have been beyond counting.
I end him here.
Dan Miryu hardened his resolve. The Stone of Resurrection poured out a brilliant light.
“Dan…… Miryu. Do you… know?”
Life flickered back into Sword's dying eyes. Dan Miryu understood that he was wringing out the last of his strength.
“Know what.”
“How horrific it is. To lose a child.”
Sword did not take his eyes off the Stone of Resurrection.
“That is…….”
“Mr. Dan Miryu! We have no time to entertain the sob story! Take that man and let us get clear of here!”
From far below, the phantom thief bellowed. The awkwardness of it pulled a laugh out of Dan Miryu.
“So he tells me.”
“Ha…….”
Sword looked blank, as if the absurdity had emptied him out.
“Interfering, to the very end…….”
His strength must have failed him. He dropped out of the air with a dull thud, and Dan Miryu gathered him into his arms and came down to the earth.
“Mr. Phantom, I have no complaints about you—but this man looks as though he will die any moment.”
“We cannot let him die. There is much I must ask.”
Dan Miryu accepted that and treated him. Sword, who had seemed certain to die on the spot, was restored without a single wound, immaculate.
“Trust the Stone of Resurrection. Performance, guaranteed.”
The phantom thief offered this peculiar remark and stretched, working the stiffness from his back.
“It is finished, then.”
“Yes. It is finished.”
A small wind tickled the hair of both. On the ground lay a green field, grown under the influence of the Stone of Resurrection. Dan Miryu closed the necklace. The light that had been brightening the world vanished without a trace.
“Ngh!”
“There is a price, after all.”
“Yes……. I will not be able to use this a second time.”
Dan Miryu collapsed to the ground and caught his breath. Sweat had soaked him through.
“At that rate, you may as well not have it.”
“True enough. Fortunate that my body is sturdy.”
The phantom thief slung Sword roughly over his shoulder.
“Can you stand?”
“Somehow or other, yes.”
From far off came sirens, and the beat of helicopters.
“Best we run before this turns into a bother.”
“I will see you home.”
The two of them ran out to meet the rising sun.