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62. Rage Against My Machine
Only a few stone throws from the waterfront in Toyosuna, Mihama Ward, the Yorusada Mall was a large, glass-roofed hanger, quarter of a mile long. Connected by an excellent trainline into Tokyo, it was the furthest one could go north-east without actually leaving the city limits itself. In no time at all, the Mazda Capella…
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61. Failure of a Saviour, Part I
Ten Years Before Current EventsChiyoda Special Ward, Tokyo “Mom, where are we going?” “Not much further now, sweetheart,” soothed a young woman, dressed in an elegant pinstriped blue blazer and pencil skirt. She led her protesting son by the hand through the heart of the Tokyo Metropolis. Only two blocks away from the National Diet…
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60. Rendezvous
New to one of them, another voice made Rin and Ibuse both spin on a heel. “Is it finally over?” Stepping tremulously toward them, Aiko Yakuhin’ face was pale beyond belief. Her gait wobbled with every step. Laying her eyes on Rin, she paused for a moment, eyes wide. “You’re okay.” She mumbled. “Rin, you’re—”…
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59. Evening Corridor
Rinkaku Mandala 麟閣曼荼羅 “You had better explain yourself. Right now.” Rin faced off against his mentor in his further plane. His gaze, steel-hardened; his voice, calm—unreasonably measured. “That man, Nagora Ibuse.” The Architect’s arms were folded. He glared back at his inheritor, eyes hidden by his helmet. “You cannot trust him. He has been blessed…
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58. Back Beat
“Everybody freeze!” Nagora Ibuse charged forth from the beyond, gun in both hands. His detective’s intuition had been spot-on. Right at the centre of all this was Rinkaku Harigane himself; he’d recognise that black mop anywhere. One glance at this chaotic landscape told him all he needed to. From the boy’s eidetic profiling of JPRO’s…
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57. Cornerstone Acrux
“Shit—I knew this was another of Hakana’s schemes, sending me here.” Meguru Yoha tutted, scuffing the ground with his toe. “This messed-up landscape is definitely Yamashita’s doing. You’d think Hakana got the whole damn squad in on this, and didn’t even think of telling me.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled up…
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56. Failsafe
The silver Mazda Capella pulled up on the street next to Kawarajima park at 11:07. It came as a shock to Nagora Ibuse, rolling down his tinted passenger window, to see nothing out of ordinary. His dispatch hadn’t told him when the incident first began, but he’d originally received the call ten minutes later. He’d…
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55. Riverflow
It took Ibuse a second to realise that something had, in fact, changed. After another flash of white, he found himself humming along the highway once again, at exactly the same point he’d departed. He recognised the overhead distance markers, and the positions of the higher-rise buildings in the distance. His sacred intrusion of his…
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54. Kindred
The distortion in Kawarajima only grew worse. The strikes of the lightning and the blinding white rifts only became more frequent. Stone ground against stone, and stone split further stone; boulder-sized clumps of earth were jettisoned across the sky by those wild, arcing currents of psychic energy. Many Rejected remained, dotted all around the archipelago.…
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53. Unfortunate Son
Nagora Ibuse hadn’t known what to expect when he passed beyond the light and in between those golden sliding doors. In that final instant, his mind was flooded with panicked thoughts, paralytic what-ifs. A stone of resolve formed in the detective’s gut, and he clung diligently onto the only advice he could trust—Toshina’s—and stayed his…
XCEL 