"For as long as I've been conscious, I've been fighting."
The first thing I remember from when I was a child, is the landscape that appeared in front of me, a completely white room. In it were 70 kids my own age.
All of us were being put through intense training, we didn't understand anything, but we all knew we had one goal, to survive our martyrdom.
And although we did our best to survive....
Only 5 of us made it out alive to the extreme conditions imposed on us. Once we got out, I finally had the first memory that will stay with me for my entire life.
The disappointed faces of the bastards who had subjected us to such torture they called "training". They didn't say anything, they didn't talk to each other, but in their annoyed faces it was clear what they were thinking.
"Only 5 nothing more? What a waste of time."
Then, at that very moment I realized what was happening.
Our sacrifice, the deaths of my companions, everything that had happened in that test.... I was just an investment to them, we were cattle, mere rag dolls they could discard whenever they wanted.
My blood boiled as I swore in my heart to avenge them all.
At the age of 9, when my Skill showed its first signs of manifesting, I was sent to the battlefield. There I saw something that marked me for life.
The red of blood, the putrid smell emanating from the earth full of bodies and visors, the sound of explosions that now, could be heard inches away from me, threatening that I would be the next one to be blown up.
I saw brave men and women, cowards, selfish men and women, madmen and children alike die.
I saw mothers cry, I saw true heroes rise, I saw great men rise.
In the midst of all the chaos I met one of those "great men", although he was only a boy of my own age. Amidst the hell of the battlefield I met Kisaragi Ryugamine.
We fought side by side whatever was thrust before us, our shared suffering on the battlefield making us almost like brothers.
By the time I was 17, the war was over. We successfully defended our territory from the invading U.S. army and were able to make Japan an independent country.
Everyone was celebrating the victory.
Our soldier brothers were singing and swinging their elbows while drinking beers. Those who had families could finally go home to meet their wives, children and parents.
But something felt wrong...
The bastards who had sacrificed those children in the experiment were still on the loose, and not only that. They were also being rewarded for their "hard" work.
So, at that moment I knew, there were still loose ends to be tied up.
As long as those assholes were still on the loose. My loved ones and I were going to be in danger, because in the end, what caused the wars was nothing more than the people who hovered over us, who manipulated us from the shadows as if we were puppets.
The High Corporate Society. The 13 great families. Whatever they were called, it was only a synonym of power, making clear to the people below them a subtle but at the same time strong message.
Some time later I learned of the big twist. The man I had considered my best friend, Kisaragi Ryugamine, was a member of the people I hated so much. A member of the 13 Great Families.
He then invited me to join them, as a staff member. I didn't want to, it was simply unworthy of me to think of being one of them.
Nor did I want to serve the people I hated so much, it was a repulsive idea, it made my guts churn just thinking about it. But perhaps what hurt me the most was to see that the first person in whom I had placed my trust was someone from that group.
I tried to hate Ryugamine with all my being, I tried to push him away from me, I tried to despise him as a person, a friend and an individual. But I just couldn't.
He was too kind, too considerate, if you needed something, he would surely do you that favor. He was simply a good man.
In those days I always asked myself a question.
"How could someone like him be a member of such a despicable collective?"
All the while I remained in denial, reluctant to accept the generous opportunity Ryuu offered me. I would always turn them down, he would tell me that he would always insist with it that he would never give up on taking his dear friend with him.
Time went on and on.
Then at the age of 18 I was given a choice.
An organization was after all the children who had come out of that hellish experiment. Everyone involved was being killed.
No doubt, my theory that I needed to connect the dots was true. But I never thought that we would be the ones to tie up the loose ends.
Then Ryugamine appeared, again holding out his hand to me. Then I had no choice. It was either disappear or join what I hated the most.
In the end I accepted. There was no doubt that as long as I was alive, there would always be a chance to get things done, there would always be another morning.
When I arrived at the Kisaragi's condominium, I was met with a big surprise. All the survivors, all my experiment brothers, were being welcomed by the Kisaragi.
The 5 of us were back together again.
Uemi, Kurumi, Masahito, Tsubami and me.
Then I realized something. From the beginning, the Kisaragi family was trying to save us.
***
One day Miss Rikka and Ryuu brought a boy with them. The boy stayed too long in Ryuu's arms. It was something new, none of the children who came to practice here with Miss Rikka had ever been brought like that.
The boy was white-haired and fine-featured, looking beaten, disheveled and malnourished. Key signs that, this young boy, at his young age, had already been through an ordeal of things.
I couldn't help but be curious. Once I had time to ask Ryuu about the matter, I began the interrogation without even thinking about it.
I found out several things about the boy, many things in fact. But the one that caught my attention the most was when Ryuu told me that this young boy was Akagami's son.
Fate is sometimes curious. It leads certain people to meet each other. Who would have thought that I would meet the son of none other than the "Incinerator of Death himself."
Days passed since that conversation, until I decided to go see the young man on the excuse that I was doing my job. Once I was in the middle of the labyrinth, I saw him.
A boy standing in the middle of the entire central quadrant of cobblestone slabs. A peculiar sight, but considering his circumstances, it wasn't entirely crazy to have him locked up here.
I approached and greeted him, everything was going normal, until I looked straight into his eyes. It was as if I had seen a ghost in a mirror.
The boy's eyes looked regular to the naked eye, but every so often, in a brief moment, you could see the most shocking thing about the whole thing.
His eyes were empty, trembling and almost opaque, as if the sunlight did not hit them, his pupils dilated from time to time, and at the bottom of it all I saw what was reflected in his eyes.
A murderous anger capable of burning everything. It was the same look I used to have when I was young.
I couldn't help but feel identified, so I decided to treat the boy as if he were my own son, applying all the experience I had learned with Tsubaki.
The boy did not want to talk to me at first. His mind was full of frustration and remorse. To him, we were the bastards who had separated him from his sister. Which was more than understandable.
But what if he grew up with that hatred inside him? What if one day, things we didn't expect happened and he turned that hatred on us?
Where I grew up, the one who stayed stuck in one state and didn't adapt was the one who died first. This boy had to be coped with somehow.
So even though he would ignore me when I talked to him, give me sharp looks, or sometimes talk back to me ugly, I never gave up trying to talk to him.
As the days went by, the boy opened up more and more to all of us around him. Miss Rikka, Ryuu and me.
Then, that look of hatred and remorse, was loosening.... No, it grew even stronger and transformed into something new. In determination.
Then, he began to train in earnest, since it was not known what was going on inside that boy's mind, but now something very big was pushing him to keep walking forward, to keep getting stronger, smarter, a bigger person.
Bad things happened to him, but that never stopped him from moving forward. Even when he found out he was an "Abnormal" his eyes never stopped shining.
He reminded me of Kisaragi Ryugamine.
Then, one day, Miss Rikka called me to the center of the labyrinth. I knew it was to ask me for a favor, but I could never have guessed it was to make such an unexpected request as this.
"I need you to train Riochiro, but attack him with everything you have."
I knew what that meant, attacking him even with my Skill, was insane. I could train the boy in my swordsmanship arts, but I would never attack him with a Skill.
But somehow or other, I was convinced. So I simply took the practice sword, stood guard in front of my opponent.
In the process I took Miss Rikka's borrowed power and then the boy came and stood in front of me. To my surprise his stance was great.
It was the one that practitioners of the art "Sword-Martial" usually have. Only people who have fought countless battles and who have practiced to the point of exhaustion can achieve it without having to correct it thoroughly.
But once he raised his sword, I could also see his most characteristic trait change almost instantly.
His eyes now rested on me, with a cold sense of scheming within them, the boy moved them agilely all over my body.
They watched my hands, he watched my feet, he watched my torso. As if he was waiting for any movement from me. For some reason, I felt like I was being analyzed.
Then the fight started and I got a closer look at his eyes. Now bathed in fierceness and determination, set on me without moving a single iota of his attention to the surroundings.
That was the look of a warrior.
Focused on achieving his goal, defeating the person in front of him.
In the war, many of my compatriots and comrades developed the same characteristic. What I mean by this is that now, at this very moment, this boy is forming himself.
For a 12-year-old, he is good, but he still lacks the experience that I have. He was very easy to neutralize, even if his movements were careful and he didn't leave any holes in his stance.
But it was easy to break, unbalance and counter his attacks.
The battle lasted exactly 5 seconds.
The rest of the day, it was the same. The boy would lunge at me again and again, after getting up from the floor. The process was repetitive and exhausting even for me.
But at the end of the day I decided to train him. A diamond in the rough like him shouldn't be left to drift. But then again, I already had the best teacher any young apprentice could wish for.
Time went by and the fights were constant and intense, although up to that moment the boy had only been able to last fighting against me for 20 seconds exactly.
But that progress was only that of a month at the most. It could not be denied that his skill was growing by leaps and bounds.
So it was weeks and months before the boy was able to fight me. 4 minutes and 23 seconds, that was his longest time so far, all the fights lasted around that time.
The skills that the young Takanashi had with the sword were of a higher level than those of a simple apprentice, it seemed unbelievable that he had only been practicing with the sword for two years.
However, his analysis of my habits and tendencies in combat, were the main responsible for the boy to rise to such a level by himself.
He was very good at analyzing his opponent, so much so that before he made the move, he anticipated it, and depending on the way the duel developed, he even knew what my way of finishing him off was going to be.
It is such a great analytical ability that even Kisaragi Ryugamine himself did not have at such a young age. But this boy had managed to master it at the tender age of 13.
How many times did he and Miss Rikka have to fight for this to be possible?
It had to be thousands or millions of times.
He had told Miss Rikka before, but this boy could probably become a Sword Master in the future if he so wished.
But still, the boy was reaching a limit, one that he could not reach without having a Skill.
Not because his effort and skill didn't allow it, but because his variety of attacks and his strategy was limited to only attacking me with the sword, while I could bombard him with fire, electrocute him and have super strength.
But for him that was not a limitation either. The young Riochiro knew exactly which were the weak points of all the Skills and how to use them in his favor to be able to come out successful and victorious from certain attacks.
But equally, those weak points had a limit. Just knowing what he was going to do to dodge, counterattack or damage you, the patterns were very predictable.
Then came December, 4 minutes and 45 seconds. Before I knew it, the limit of going over 4 minutes was breaking more and more.
Young Takanashi was managing to deal with me, his goal of lasting 5 minutes in a match was getting closer and closer.
December 29th.
I remember exactly that day. The day Takanashi Riochiro broke his limit.