The Igniter

by Reki Kawahara

  The flooring was gray, and the walls and ceiling were bare concrete. Through the windows on the other side of the room, one could see the trees of the surrounding area glowing in the sunset. After pausing to look out those windows at a scene a person wouldn’t expect to find in Shinjuku, right in the center of Tokyo, Minoru looked again around the room.

  In a few words, Minoru thought the arrangement of the room was an incredible waste of the space. There was a large television and speaker set, a bookshelf that reached to the ceiling, a large sofa that could double as a bed, and a dining table that looked like it could seat ten people, all placed apart from one another, like lonely islands in the vastness of the room.

  Minoru thought that his own room was relatively empty compared to what is normal for a high school boy, but the feeling of emptiness in this vast room was like that of the Kalahari Desert.

  If he lived here, Minoru thought, he wouldn’t have to go to the banks of the Arakawa River to run; he could just run around inside this room. As he continued to drift off into thought, Yumiko seemed to have lost her patience.

  “I know that it’s shocking and all, but are you done?” she snapped.

  “Ah…y-yeah.”

  “Take off your shoes and change into these slippers.”

  Changing out of his sneakers as he was told, Minoru then followed Yumiko out into the large single room. Circling around the bookshelf, stepping over some cushions, and crossing in front of the TV, they walked fifteen meters to the western end of the room. This area alone looked fitting for a place called SFD Headquarters. There was a row of steel racks stuffed with computers, monitors, printers, scanners, drives, along with other mysterious instruments that Minoru didn’t know what they were used for. There was also an experiment table with sinks attached, the kind you might find in a middle school science room, and on top of it were several things made of both glass and metal.

  At the center of the table, looking into a large microscope, was…a child. There was no other way to put it. The young girl looked several years younger than Minoru. She couldn’t have been even in middle school yet. She looked like she was maybe in her fourth or fifth year of elementary school. She had two small braids hanging down to her back and round freckled cheeks. She was wearing the kind of T-shirt one would expect an elementary school girl to wear, with a whitish denim miniskirt. She had a name tag pinned to her chest with a safety pin and wore over her clothes a lab coat that looked like it reached to her ankles.

  “Oh? Hmm…,” the elementary school kid cutely mumbled.

  “Professor! Pro-fes-sor!!” called out Yumiko in a loud voice.

  Huh? Professor? You mean like the ones who teach at universities? thought Minoru confusedly, while Yumiko continued to raise her voice.

  “Professor, I brought him! Your new guinea pi— I mean, our new SFD member!”

  “Huh? Oh…I see,” said the girl, finally raising her head from the microscope.

  Still, this “professor” looked like any ordinary elementary school girl. She had pink cheeks and thick eyebrows and large eyes below them. Rather than wearing a lab coat and looking through a microscope, it would probably look more fitting for her to be running around outside in sportswear.

  The girl hopped off the round stool she was sitting on, trotted in between the experiment table and steel racks, and then looked up at Minoru. To Minoru, that gaze felt as if it were piercing through to his very soul, and he twitched unconsciously.

  As he stood there, Yumiko came and pushed Minoru from behind and entered the introduction phase.

  “Utsugi, this is the deputy chief and strategic commander of the SFD, Riri Isa,” Yumiko said.

  Deputy chief? Strategic commander? Riri…Isa?

  As Minoru stood there, confused, the girl’s name tag came clearly into view. In cute lettering, it said, “Fourth Year, Class Two, Riri Isa.”

  The only schools in Japan that have a fourth year are elementary schools, technical colleges, and four-year universities, but the latter two just couldn’t be possible.

  “And this is Minoru Utsugi, who we were talking about before. You know, the one you were really interested in,” Yumiko continued.

  “You didn’t have to add that, Yukko,” Riri said with a smirk, taking her right hand out of her lab coat pocket and extending it to Minoru. Minoru reflexively grasped her hand; it was small and soft.

  “I’m Isa, and I’m looking forward to working with you,” said Riri.

  “O-okay. Umm… I’m Minoru Utsugi. I’m looking forward to working with you, too,” replied Minoru.

  “All right! You can call me Deputy Isa, Riri, or Professor, like how Yukko does, or however else you want. In return, will you let me decide what to call you?” Riri asked.

  While confused, Minoru didn’t have any other options, so he nodded.

  “Perfect!” Riri smiled this time with a more innocent-looking smile, and after pulling her hand back, she tilted her head in thought.

  “Hmm… Utsugi… Ucchii… Tsugitsugi… Nope, we’re going to have to use your first name… Minomino, Mirumiru… Norucchi…,” Riri mumbled.

  “Huh?”

  Those couldn’t possibly be nickname candidates, could they? Minoru shivered in thought, when Yumiko put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Just accept it. I have to put up with the name Yukko after all. Professor really likes these sort of things, thinking about problems that have no answer,” said Yumiko.

  “Okay…?” replied Minoru.

  Riri, who meanwhile had been walking back and forth in front of the table, suddenly clapped her hands together.

  “I’ve got it! From now on, you will be called Mikkun!!”

  Surely it was just a coincidence, but the name was very similar to “Mii-kun,” the nickname Minoru’s relative Norie Yoshimizu had given him, so Minoru thought it could have been a lot worse, but just then Yumiko burst into laughter.

  “Well, you got a pretty cute nickname, didn’t you?! I suppose I’ll have to use it, too!” she laughed.

  “Please don’t,” said Minoru in a flat-out rejection.

  “I’m joking,” said Yumiko in a serious tone before heading off into the kitchen area.

  After this introduction phase was over and Yumiko had served coffee on the experiment table, the fourth-year elementary student deputy chief again openly looked Minoru over.

  “Hmm… I’ve already seen photographs, but after meeting you directly…I really am surprised. To think that you were the one who took out Biter all on your own,” said Riri in an awfully mature tone, but Minoru only shook his head.

  “I-I didn’t do it all by myself. When I fought Biter at the Saitama Super Arena, both Yumiko and DD were there,” argued Minoru.

  “You don’t have to be modest. Not only were we late, we weren’t able to help out at all. By the way, Professor, where did DD run off to?” asked Yumiko.

  “He’s apparently ‘sniffed’ another one out. He’s searching along with Oli-V,” answered Riri, stirring her cup of coffee full of milk and sugar.

  Hearing Riri’s answer, Yumiko’s eyebrows twitched.

  “Does that mean you’re the only one here today? What about Lindenberger?” Yumiko asked.

  “Absent as usual,” Riri replied.

  Who are Oli-V and Lindenberger?

  And anyway, just how many Jet Eyes are there in the…“Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Industrial Safety and Health Department, Specialized Forces Division”? Does this “professor” sitting right in front of me also have a Third Eye somewhere inside of her? If so, what is her ability?

  Minoru began to feel dizzy. Maybe it was the flood of information he had received since coming to this apartment complex–turned-base or the number of questions that kept popping up inside his head. Since he usually lived by the motto “May today be no different than tomorrow,” he realized he was weak against changes in environment. He wanted to learn the things he needed to know, then hurry back to his home in Saitama and reset his brain
.

  As if Riri had read Minoru’s thoughts, she brought the conversation back to the subject at hand.

  “Well, anyway, Mikkun. How much have you been told about the Third Eyes?” Riri asked.

  “U-umm…” Minoru straightened his posture and looked down at the black surface of the experiment table. “They are spheres about two centimeters in diameter that come from space and infect human hosts… We don’t know how many there are, but they come in two types: red ‘Ruby Eyes’ and black ‘Jet Eyes.’ The difference between them is that humans infected with Ruby Eyes are driven by a desire to kill other humans. Both types of Third Eyes give their human hosts mysterious powers. Like my shell or Yumiko’s acceleration.”

  “Hmm. You’ve been told most of what there is to know. If I were to add one thing, it would be that one of the aspects of the powers Third Eyes give their hosts is no longer that mysterious,” said Riri.

  “What?” asked Minoru, holding the coffee cup that he was about to sip in midair. “You’ve discovered how the power works?!”

  “Well…we haven’t gotten that far yet. While we can vaguely hypothesize what is happening, we still have no way of describing how,” answered Riri, shaking her head as she twisted one of her braids around her finger.

  “B-but that’s amazing! Just what is going on? What kind of power do Third Eyes possess?” asked Minoru, leaning forward.

  Riri raised a finger in front of her. “Simply put, they’re manipulating atoms and molecules. They’re using some unexplained power similar to telekinesis.”

  “Manipulating…atoms?” pondered Minoru aloud.

  “Exactly, and the effective range of that power is inversely related to the complexity of the atoms or molecules that are manipulated,” continued Riri.

  Riri then moved her right hand and passed Minoru a petri dish that was lying on the table. Inside was a shard of metal, about the size of a one-yen coin, which shined with a dull silver color Minoru was familiar with.

  “Ah… Th-this is…,” stuttered Minoru.

  “One of Biter’s teeth,” continued Riri, crossing her arms. “It’s incredible, really. There are molecules of iron and chromium organized in a nanoscale 3-D honeycomb structure within the normal hydroxylapatite crystal structure of the tooth, giving it an astonishing hardness of 2,500 on the Vickers scale.”

  “Excuse me, Professor. What is the hardness of a normal human tooth on the Vickers scale?” asked Yumiko.

  Upon hearing that question, the fourth-year elementary school girl smiled as if to say, “Great question,” before starting her explanation.

  “Our teeth are at most a hardness of four hundred. Extremely hard metal alloys such as tungsten carbide are about 1,700 and sapphire 2,300. Does that help you understand just how hard Biter’s teeth were? …Coincidentally, there is no way to reproduce the material in that tooth with any existing technology we have today. The melting point of chromium is about 1,900 degrees Celsius, but the melting point of hydroxylapatite is 1,670 degrees. If you tried to coat a tooth in chromium, the tooth would burn away. In other words, to create these teeth, Biter manipulated iron, chromium, and hydroxylapatite concurrently. Not only that, but I hear that he altered the bones and muscle structures around his jaw as well.”

  “Ah… Th-that’s correct,” Minoru said, thinking back to the time he fought the Ruby Eye, Biter, just four days before. “It was as if his mouth stretched out like that of a shark…”

  “Which means that he was able to alter the proteins, fats, calcium compounds, and other complex molecules that compose the human body at will. The Third Eyes who can alter human flesh like that generally can only use their powers on their own bodies,” explained Riri.

  “Ah… That’s why you mentioned earlier that the effective range of power is inversely related to the complexity of what it affects,” said Minoru, finding it strangely natural to speak to this elementary school girl in polite language.

  Riri nodded with the air of a professor before continuing. “Exactly. You’re catching on quick. To put it simply, the ‘effective range’ of Third Eye hosts who manipulate high molecular compounds made up of many atoms is short, but on the other hand, the simpler the molecules they manipulate, the longer the range of their power. If we split Third Eye powers into these two categories, Yukko’s ‘accelerator’ power, for example, would fall into the same category as Biter’s.”

  Yumiko, who had been listening, winced. “…Well, I mean, I am in a sense manipulating my entire body…but I don’t do anything like transform…,” she muttered.

  “Well, I bet if you tried, you could,” replied Riri with a smirk before continuing her explanation. “In Yukko’s case, she uses the acceleration generated from kicking off ground as leverage to throw all of the molecules in her body forward.

  “Therefore, according to the general rule, her power only affects her own body.”

  “She…throws her body?” repeated Minoru before turning to look at Yumiko. Yumiko in her black blazer sipped her coffee and pretended not to notice.

  Minoru had seen Yumiko, code name “Accelerator,” perform teleport-like dashes several times when they fought Biter, but he had thought her power was manipulating acceleration itself. Even when it was explained to him as her throwing all of the molecules that make up her body, he had trouble grasping the concept.

  As he tried his best to comprehend, furrowing his brow, Riri cut in unexpectedly.

  “It looks like Mikkun’s having trouble, so why don’t we show him an example of your power at work, Yukko?” Riri said.

  “What? Here?” said Yumiko, obviously against the idea, but Riri nodded, unaffected.

  “If he takes a look at what happens one more time, I’m sure he’ll understand in an instant,” she said.

  “Utsugi’s already seen me use my power several times, though,” Yumiko said but stood up from her chair.

  Prompted by Riri, Minoru stood up as well.

  “Mikkun, you should probably stand and watch from a distance… Over there will be fine,” said Riri.

  “O-okay.”

  As he was instructed, Minoru moved over near where the TV was, in the center of the south side of the giant room, which was about fifteen meters away from the experiment table along the west wall. It wouldn’t have felt like such a long distance outdoors, but indoors, Minoru felt as if he were very far away.

  “All right, let’s go! Watch closely now, Mikkun!” Riri called out.

  “I’m the one who’s doing the jumping, though,” said Yumiko, who took off her slippers, looking as if she had given up. Her two feet wrapped in black tights stepped lightly on the flooring as if she were testing its hardness.

  Yumiko lifted her arms out and behind her, perhaps to cut wind resistance, and put her right foot forward.

  But her foot didn’t touch the ground. As if it were being pulled by an invisible rubber sling, Yumiko’s body went hurtling forward at an incredible speed, hovering a few centimeters off the ground, flying past Minoru with a whoosh of wind.

  Minoru wasn’t able to follow Yumiko with his eyes as she landed on the other side of the room. It wasn’t that his eyes couldn’t keep up, but that after seeing Yumiko’s white blouse pressed strongly against her chest from the air pressure of the leap, the image burned into his brain and cut his train of thought.

  But wait, what happened to the blazer that she was just wearing? Minoru thought.

  Two seconds later, the answer was clear.

  “J-just what do you think you’re doing, Professor?!” squealed Yumiko, using her power to fly back to the west side of the room, where Riri was standing with a black blazer in her right hand and a mischievous smile on her face.

  Riri had probably grabbed the back of Yumiko’s blazer right before Yumiko dashed forward. Because Yumiko had lifted both her arms behind her, it must have easily come off and was left in Riri’s hand.

  “Give it back!” Yumiko took back her blazer as soon as she landed, but in her rush to put it back on, her h
and got caught in the left sleeve and she was having trouble. Minoru looked away as he headed back to the experiment table.

  With both of her hands stuffed in her lab coat pockets, Riri smiled at Minoru. “So, do you understand now?” she asked.

  “Umm…”

  “Just what was it that you wanted me to understand by showing me that?” wondered Minoru before reaching the answer.

  If Yumiko’s power was as Minoru had originally thought and was the power to directly amplify acceleration, it should affect everything undergoing the original acceleration. However, just by Riri, who was by no means large, grabbing hold of Yumiko’s blazer, it easily came off and was left behind. In other words…

  “This means that…Yumiko’s power only works on her own body, and her clothing is just being pulled along?” asked Minoru.

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Riri with a snap of her fingers as she helped Yumiko put her blazer back on.

  “The polar opposite of those like Yukko and the Biter who use their powers to manipulate themselves are those like DD who use their power for remote sensing.”

  Minoru thought back to the face of that young man with his sleepy-looking eyes. His power was the ability to sniff out other Third Eyes, and he was chasing after Biter along with Yumiko. The one who gave him the cool nickname “DD” was probably Riri. If so, I wonder what Oli-V and Lindenberger’s real names are…

  As Minoru began to drift off, Riri’s voice brought him back into focus.

  “DD can’t manipulate any molecules at all, but in return, he can sense molecules that are manipulated by other Third Eyes several kilometers away. You could say that it’s a power that specializes in range, having given up both potential for attack and defense,” Riri explained.

  “Ha-ha… It sounds like we’re discussing where to put our status points in an RPG…,” Minoru said.