He pushed himself to attack more quickly, more viciously. But his desperation backfired; he tried to press forward decisively but took an awkward step and lost his balance. He pitched forward and tumbled to the ground.
Naomi pushed himself up out of the dirt. It was too late; a solid wall of the eerie fox-masks encircled him completely.
Rather than attacking, however, the things joined hands. A bluish-white electric light began to arc around the circle they’d formed around him.
“They’re on the second floor!” shouted Sensei, his voice increasingly desperate.
Looking up, Naomi saw the same bluish light flashing through the window of Ruri’s room. Electric sparks arced into the air just outside it.
Oh crap, that can’t be good.
At the same moment that thought crossed his mind, he heard a loud bzzzt.
“Huh?” Stunned, Naomi looked around. The army of fox-mask men was gone, and the dirt under his feet was now a neatly paved stone path. He saw red handrails to both sides and could hear the sound of running water; he was on a bridge. He could hear large crowds on both sides of the river.
“What the…” someone murmured behind him.
Startled, Naomi turned around to see Ichigyou Ruri lying on the ground, looking just as astonished as he felt. Her casual, baggy outfit suggested she’d been lounging in her bedroom only a moment earlier.
Those masked things had done something to her. To both of them.
Oh no. Oh crap. Is this bridge—
“Naomi!” Sensei’s voice boomed out of Naomi’s glasses. They must’ve still been in communication range, but when Naomi looked for him, the older man was nowhere in sight.
“Sensei! Where are we?!”
“The bastards just abused their system privileges,” Sensei replied angrily. “They moved you right to the scene! You’re right where the lightning strike is going to happen!”
It was just as he’d feared. They were stuck in the one place they really didn’t want to be.
“Ichigyou-san!” Naomi hurriedly reached down and grabbed Ruri by the hand. They needed to run, right now. It didn’t matter where.
But just as he was pulling her up, something else pulled her sharply down.
“Ow!”
Instead of rising to her feet, Ruri pitched forward and hit the ground, caught by the ankle. Naomi came closer and saw what had snagged her—it was the ground itself. The stone surface of the bridge had warped and coiled itself around her leg, chaining her solidly in place. It was the sort of trick Naomi usually pulled with the God Hand.
This was what system privileges really meant: the power to control and reshape the world around him.
His glove vibrating fiercely, Naomi ripped the stone apart. But the bridge reacted immediately, reforming the chain in the blink of an eye. This wasn’t going to work; the system was too fast for him.
Springing to his feet, Naomi looked wildly from one side of the bridge to the other. There were thick crowds on either end. After a moment, he realized they weren’t made up of humans—it was the army of fox-masks who had brought him here.
Their menacing silence conveyed their message clearly enough.
Stop trying to run. Stay right where you are. Let events continue the way they’re supposed to.
Naomi looked up at the sky. The dark, stormy clouds above had started to rumble ominously.
“Two minutes left!” came the voice in his ear, tense and abrupt.
“Sensei…” Naomi called to future self, his voice pleading. He called to the man who’d trained him, who’d spent the last three months with him, guiding him and teasing him like a brother.
The days they’d spent in training flashed through his mind in rapid succession. From the day they’d met, they’d walked this road together.
“Listen, Naomi.” His answer came, as always, not even a hint of despair in his tone. “This is it. This is the moment of truth. Don’t worry about the repercussions, all right?” Sensei paused for just a moment to let his instructions sink in, then went on. “Give those bastards a real show.”
Naomi nodded in reply. His mind was already kicking into gear, visualizing what a real show might be. If he could visualize it, he could make it real.
Naomi held his right hand up toward the sky. Then, he began to focus.
A small sphere formed in the palm of his glove. It grew quickly to the size of a baseball, then to the size of a soccer ball, then even larger than Naomi himself.
The sphere writhed with motion, in a state of constant change. For a moment, its surface looked like iron. In the next, it was water, and then fire. It was everything at once, everything that made up this world, consolidated into a single ball of chaos.
“Nngh…” A grunt forced its way out of Naomi’s mouth. His brain struggled under the strain, and blood coursed through his head like boiling water. Keeping himself conscious and focused took sheer willpower.
The sphere grew to the size of an oil storage tank.
From far away, Naomi could hear the crowds of spectators babbling in confusion. The sphere was visible to everyone on the banks of the river by now.
Sensei had told him to give them a real show, so he’d make this the evening’s grand finale.
A flash of light tore through the sky, and thunder crashed. The moment of truth was finally here.
Naomi began to close his hand, trying to grip the enormous thing he’d created. Its sheer, impossible mass resisted fiercely, but little by little, his fingers squeezed around it, crushing it. The thing was practically a planet, but he was going to squeeze it down until it fit in his hand.
Is this really possible?
For a moment, Naomi’s conviction wavered as the sheer implausibility of what he was doing overcame his powers of imagination. He wasn’t anyone special, after all. He was just another nobody. Could he really pull off a miracle?
He faltered, knowing he was just one step before the goal line. His self-doubt, his indecisiveness, bogged him down, and he knew he was going to fail—
“I know you, Naomi,” he heard, the words shoving him forward—words that, in a way, came from Naomi himself. “You can do this.”
With all his strength, Naomi squeezed his hand shut. The enormous sphere he’d created pulsed inside his fist.
Then, he gently, carefully opened his hand again.