Chương 11: Ascent

The inside of the vehicle was cramped. Steven backed the truck out of the driveway, the engine vibrating through the frame. Charlotte sat beside him in the passenger seat, leaving Kurisu to fold his long legs behind her, as Kellevra wedged in the middle and Ace sat behind his father.

"Everyone buckled?" Steven asked.

"Yeah," Ace grumbled, shifting his knees.

"Kellevra, move out of my space." Kurisu rolled his window down as the truck climbed the winding Lariat Loop. The incoming breeze thinned out, carrying a slight chill. He drew a slow breath through his nose, expanding his chest, letting the crisp air settle in his lungs. This atmospheric bite felt familiar; he had spent years running the high-altitude crags of his homeworld, and this Colorado wind carried that same musk of dry stone and pine sap.

He rested his forearm on the door frame, tracking the vertical lines of the granite cliffs, appreciating the terrain. Charlotte glanced back over her shoulder, noting his cramped posture, and rolling her eyes at the bagged sword in his hands.

"Are you doing okay back there, Kurisu?"

"It is of no consequence," Kurisu grunted in his native tongue, as he tried—and failed— to shift his knees, keeping his gaze on the cliffs. He tapped his fingers against the door, feeling the cool air blow across his knuckles. The air here reminded him of the mountains of his home.

"Alright, everybody out, watch your hats!" Steven announced when the truck finally pulled into the gravel lot at the summit. Kurisu stepped out, leaning his weight forward as the wind snapped the fabric of his duster. Walking to the stone railing, they all looked down the drop into the foothills, tracking the yellow valley floor as it sprawled out toward the distant city.

"From this vantage, the entirety of the realm is laid bare," Kurisu observed.

"Check it out!" Ace shouted over the wind, pointing down the slope at a twisted pine fifty yards away.

"That tree looks like a skeleton hand." Following the boy's finger, Kurisu measured the distance, calculating the wind winding through the valley. He reached into the truck bed, his fingers closing around a wedge of red sandstone. He bounced the rock in his hand, catching Ace's eye with a slight nod.

"Ace," Kurisu said with a small tug at the corner of his lips.

"Observe." As he stood loose and casual, arms relaxed at his sides, he pulled Ki from his Tanden, guiding it through his Keiraku to his hand, and flicked his wrist. A sharp crack like a rifle echoed through the woods, as the sandstone zipped forward, carving a perfect line across the gap. The dead pine shuddered, as the rock punched a fist-sized tunnel through its trunk, spraying splinters across the surrounding brush. Ace jumped.

"Whoa! Did you just... shoot a rock?" Kellevra looked up, his eyes wide.

"No way. How did you do that?"

"I course Ki through my meridians. Such an act fortifies the flesh, rendering feats of this caliber possible." Steven, missing the throw but catching the crack, walked up with a frown.

"Everything okay? Sounded like a tire blew."

"Dad! Kurisu just sniped that tree with a rock!" Ace yelled. Steven looked at the splintered pine, then back at Kurisu, who gave a blank stare.

"Come on," Steven said, shaking his head.

"Let's check out the museum before the wind blows us off the mountain." As the family moved toward the entrance of the Buffalo Bill Museum, Kurisu lingered at the stone railing. The rock was just a parlor trick to amuse the boys, but the sensation he had felt in the basement, that strange pressure, was an entirely different mechanism. He checked his surroundings, verifying he stood alone with the wind.

Closing his eyes, he sank his focus past his Tanden, drawing his attention down his spine to locate that spinning ring. He located the ring, but unlike before, it wasn't spinning. Kurisu knit his eyebrows together, flexing his Ki to divert it towards the ring. The feeling wasn't right, and his Ki snapped back to the original flow. He breathed out slowly, shifting his focus back to the ring at the base of his spine. Mentally, he reached out and gently flicked the edge, causing the ring to start slowly spinning.

As if pulled into a drain, his Ki instantly diverted, flowing from his Tanden through the tiny hole in the center of the ring as it spun. The wind split around him. A blue distortion rippled across his skin, lifting his hair against gravity. The surge of power flooded his nervous system, heavy and invigorating. He kept his eyes closed, deciding to test how this new state affected his awareness. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Driven by this odd internal pressure, he pushed his awareness outward; it washed down the mountain like a tidal wave. Kurisu gasped, opening his eyes. His awareness had expanded far more than expected. The feedback was immense, causing pressure to build at the base of his spine. Taking a breath, he slowly pushed outward once more. He mapped the erratic heat signatures of tourists in the parking lot, then expanded further, feeling the dimmer presences in the town of Golden below.

He swept outward into the Denver Metroplex. The density of millions of faint signatures compressed into a murky static that escalated the discomfort and began to pound against the back of his skull. Deep within that gray noise near North Denver, a larger presence burned. Ignoring the intervening miles, it flared like a localized bonfire. Kurisu locked his focus on the presence. The beacon snuffed out, vanishing completely without a lingering trace.

"What manner of presence is this?" he whispered, his brow furrowing. The influx of sensation, noise, color, and weight spiked behind his eyes, driving a sharp pressure into his skull as blood trickled from his nose. Clenching his jaw, Kurisu forced the mental door shut on the dizzying overload, letting the unwanted questions fall away like stones. Later. Shifting his intent to measurement, he sought the full reach of this state before his energy depleted and forced him into exhaustion.

His eyes, now clear, fixed on the shattered pine fifty yards out. Time to see what this does. A quick closing step, followed by a standard rotational kick. Dropping into a slight crouch, he ground the rubber of his soles into the gravel, pushing off his rear foot with a standard burst of strength. He anticipated a normal run. He assumed he would strike the bark with slightly elevated force.

The moment his calf contracted, he launched forward, leaving a localized vacuum and a shockwave of pulverized gravel in his wake. Too fast. Way too fast! He didn't expect this speed. Without a vacuum tunnel deployed to cut the friction, his body hit the atmosphere like a solid wall. The intervening fifty yards vanished. Kurisu virtually materialized mid-air directly in front of the aged trunk, his hips already torquing into the kick he intended to throw a full second later.

Azure electricity dragged around his shin. The sudden displacement cracked the air. Slamming into the atmosphere without a protective slipstream, his raw velocity compressed the air, igniting a flash of heat. His leg drove completely through the trunk. The impact vaporized the remaining wood into fine dust, the combined lightning blast and atmospheric ignition scorching the granite rock face behind it black.

Kurisu skidded into the gravel on the opposite side of the tree, sliding back three feet, smoke curling from his pant leg. He stared at the blackened crater replacing the pine. Blinking, he tried to process the scorched trail and the surrounding disaster he had just carved into the mountain." Fukaku..." he breathed. Along the scorched path, rocks were shoved aside, and trees pitched sharply away from his trail. The acceleration was so extreme his optic nerves skipped the transition entirely.

He clamped his focus down, choking off the flow from his Tanden. Stop. Calm down. Close! Severing the connection, his energy dissipated instantly. Dropping against his shoulders, his hair returned to normal. He stood up, dusting off his knees, scanning the area to ensure the antics remained unseen.

"Kurisu! Come o— What the hell happened out here?!" Charlotte shouted, taking in the scene before turning to him. She's bound to be angry. Kurisu braced his shoulders against the impending interrogation. He watched as her jaw locked, her eyebrows angling down at the sight of the smoldering heap of former tree; she took in a sharp breath and forcefully averted her eyes.

"We're going to miss the start of the tour!" Charlotte snapped, checking her wristwatch. Blinking at the pivot, Kurisu forced his best clumsy expression. He stumbled slightly on the dirt, scratching the back of his head.

"A-Ah! Coming!" he yelled back, his voice cracking. He jogged toward her, his sneakers crunching the gravel, leaving the smoking, blackened scar on the mountain behind him.

"And you had absolutely nothing to do with that!" she hissed as he caught up to her. Ah, yes. Very angry, indeed. Miles away in a South Denver home, a boy lounged in a gaming chair, his thumbs working a controller beneath the digital gunfire of a television screen. A strange pressure spiked through the house, smothering the noise of the television. The boy dropped the controller, scrambling past his desk; he sprinted down the hallway and shoved the back door open.

He hit the edge of the patio, his eyes locking onto the western horizon, finding the jagged purple silhouette of the mountains towering above Golden. Reacting instantly, his messy, black hair bleached to platinum, while his dark irises bled to crimson. He stood paralyzed in the fading light, staring towards the invisible force surging from the west, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. The western pressure vanished, as the signal disappeared. The boy blinked, the residual energy collapsing inward.

His hair and eyes darkened back to black, until they mirrored a normal human again. He exhaled a long breath, planting his hands on his hips as he scowled at the western sky. The back door creaked open.

"Honey?" Gloria stepped onto the patio, drying her hands on a dish towel. She scanned the yard, settling her gaze on her son's back.

"Is everything alright? You bolted out here like the house was on fire." He turned around, running a hand through his hair to check the texture. It felt normal.

"Yeah... I think everything's okay," he said, glancing back at the mountains.

"But whatever that was... it made my hair change." Gloria stopped wiping her hands. She studied him, her eyes tracking his features for a long moment, verifying his return to normal before she gave him a slow nod.

"Just... come back inside, okay?" she said quietly.

"Dinner's almost ready."

"Yeah," he muttered.

"Coming." He took one last look west. The sky was silent, but the feeling lingered on his skin.