Renegade Rupture (35 page)

“You all say that, especially my father, but in the end, even he is a hypocrite. Be honest with yourselves; you do it to protect yourselves. And in my father’s case, to save him from ever showing a damned emotion,” Jackobi said.

“If that’s what you think, you’re wrong,” Falcon said. “I came on the scene in the Glaknabrade aftermath when it was stale, rather than fresh. Grayn went mad. He killed everyone involved and was never the same. I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime, kid, but the remains of that . . . I saw the blood, loosed feces, scattered limbs, and other things beyond my imagination. I must carry those visions with me. Sometimes, even to this day, I have recurring nightmares of what I saw. If I could be in your place, free of such images, I would trade places with you in a second,” Falcon said.

“I’m, I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn,” Jackobi said.

“No, you didn’t. You were only honest,” Falcon said.

“So, what happened to Grayn after . . .” Jackobi asked.

“He did what many lost souls do. Looking for answers, looking for reasons, looking for peace, he embraced religion, rather than faith. Order over reason, tradition over logic, he became a machine for a twisted sense of justice devoid of free will and replaced with force . . . He joined the Strifes to once again be able to see black and white, but in his case, now it’s only black. And now, here they are again, Master and student, and frankly, I saw Foxblade fight Grayn,” Falcon said, worry to his voice.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Jackobi asked.

“Grayn only went down because your father and I spent years as a team. You know me. I have a hard time admitting someone is better than myself, but it took both of us to put him down, and that was years ago. IAM be with him,” Falcon said.

For the first time in his life, Jackobi embraced the impossible. Jackobi stared out at his father’s back, and for the first time, a foreign feeling entered him.

Worry.

Chapter Twenty Five:
The Fox of Blades

Foxblade looked across the arena, forcing his emotions down, trying to wade through countless repressed images to grasp onto his killer instinct, to embrace the nothing that he instructed Gisbo to grasp onto . . . but it wasn’t enough.

With his long, silky, snow white hair, tanned skin, and small, squinted, diamond-like eyes, Grayn was now a near spitting image of his father. But worst of all was the way the boy carried himself, the way he stood, the way he moved . . . It was like looking at Foxblade’s own reflection, a dark reflection at least half his age that was faster, stronger, and ready for an event to the death.

To win this fight, Foxblade knew he wouldn’t need to just defeat Grayn, but also himself. Did things get better with age? Could experience best youth? He was about to find out . . .

“Fighters, take your position,” Narroway said. The nervous whine in his throat was lost to everyone but Foxblade and those closest to him. The Renegade Chieftain knew what was at stake here.

“Kill my student . . .” Foxblade said to himself, over and over again, trying to focus on it, but to no avail. “Kill my student or die,” Foxblade said, changing it. This helped a little as he slowly felt the nothingness, the inward paradox, take over as only his eyes became a witness to his own actions.

“BEGIN!” Narroway yelled.

Both fighters threw their daggers. The daggers looked like yellow bolts of lightning as they soared in near perfect unison and timing and then, the crowd witnessed something talked about in legend, but never seen.

Grayn’s daggers and Foxblade’s met one another in exact symmetry. The four daggers touched, point to point, vibrating with power, frozen in a dead stop in mid-air.

“That’s, that’s impossible,” Brawlda said, jaw dropping. “They are in perfect unison, down to the last molecule. Their power, their aim, it’s equal in every way. It’s . . . Every Shininja dreams of having such precision. I always thought of Foxblade as a friend and a rival. The man is so far out of my league, at a level I couldn’t even possibly imagine. Every fight we had was a mercy . . . This is insanity,” Brawlda said.

“A Shininja’s attacks are more precise than powerful. A fight between Shininjas are rarely long. If they do not kill their target with the first strike, it is a rare thing. A slight muscle twitch, a blink at the wrong moment, and one of them will . . .” Perry spoke, then noticed Jackobi out of the corner of his eye and did not finish.

Jackobi watched his father as he and Grayn took a matching sidestep, mirroring one another’s movements perfectly, each predicting the other’s footfall as their arms quivered from the absolute pressure of the blades, trying to find an angle, anything, to slip up the other.

“Grayn . . .” Foxblade said.

Grayn said nothing.

“You were the best of us, the purest of us. Why? Why would you embrace madness in place of reason?” Foxblade asked.

Grayn said nothing.

“Have you nothing to say to me after all these years?” Foxblade asked.

Grayn said nothing.

“I see. Then you are truly lost,” Foxblade said. “If you have no words for me, at least show me action.”

The two fighters stopped their circling and froze. Seconds later, they were gone, along with their essence. It was still a quickdraw match, but on a different level as the two fighters flew at one another with clings and clangs of their daggers, their speed increasing with every strike, until even the most seasoned eyes could no longer keep up. Only flashes and glints of yellow sparks as steel clashed against steel could be viewed.

“This is . . .” Brawlda started, when one after another, there were SHOOM, SHOOM, SHOOM noises. “What the hell is that?”

“They’re breaking the sound barrier. They have become one with the air around them now, more spirit, more energy than man. The molecules that form them are twisting their natural structures,” Moordin said. “It’s as if their souls are doing battle . . .”

“Moordin . . . does,” Perry started.

“If they continue like this, they will eradicate their bodies’ bonding, which is a mystery all in itself. Foxblade told me of this ability, an ability that even the Fox of Blades before him couldn’t perfect, saying that he believed the power of creation, the power of IAM himself, lies within the bonds of every atom. If one could grasp it, well, he could achieve the power of creation itself, go beyond a mere mortal into something . . . I can’t fully comprehend. It seems that Foxblade and Grayn perfected it. It is the ultimate assassination technique, moving with the speed of light or, rather, embracing and becoming one with a lightning strike. Time travel is only supposed to be possible when moving beyond the speed of light. But that in itself, science tells us, is impossible. Nothing is faster than electricity. Right now, both of them are literally riding the lightning, bending it to their will, becoming it,” Perry said.

Jackobi said nothing as he looked on, his ice blue eyes morose and focused.

“The temperature inside a lightning bolt can reach 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the sun. This is still a quickdraw match. Whoever blocks incorrectly, counterattacks inefficiently . . . will simply be no more,” Perry said.

“Please, enough with the facts!” Jackobi said.

“He’ll be fine, son,” Perry said as he put a hand on his shoulder. “No one can defeat your father.”

Jackobi said nothing, only looked on at the flashes of yellow helplessly.

“But it seems it won’t come to that. They’ve run out,” Moordin said. Both fighters appeared in a swirling debut. They fell across from one another on one knee, breathing hard and no longer glowing. For a moment, they appeared out of breath, wasted, but that was the case for only one fighter.

Grayn leapt up and sprinted at his former master with a vigor that surprised even Foxblade.

In an odd maneuver, Grayn, with his dagger pointed upward in his clenched fist, went for an uppercut, aiming for Foxblade’s throat.

In an equally quick maneuver, possible only from decades of experience, Foxblade hammered his left forearm onto the charging hand along the hilt, halting the attack while bringing up his right, dagger clenched fist. Grayn twisted his neck at the last possible moment, taking Foxblade’s knuckle rather than his blade. The younger Shininja was stunned for a moment, giving Foxblade just enough time to rise to his feet. In a quick side shuffle, the Renegade kicked Grayn along his left knee, buckling him. Foxblade did a little hop and extended his right foot into the inside of Grayn’s knee and bashed Grayn in the jaw with the hilt of his dagger, sending the boy off balance and falling toward the ground, open to a killing strike.

“DO IT! FINISH IT!” Jackobi screamed.

But Foxblade only stood over him, not budging, as student and master locked eyes.

“What is he doing? FINISH HIM!” Perry shouted.

“Grayn,” Foxblade said. “Pick up your daggers.”

Grayn slowly rose to his feet and picked up his daggers, standing in an offensive stance.

“What happened to you, Grayn? What do you want out of all this?”

“Order,” Grayn said.

“And you think the Strifes will do that? Bring order? At the cost of what? People’s humanity and your own?” Foxblade asked.

“Yes,” Grayn said.

“That is your decision? To be part of an organization using force, rather than choice, to help a lost world?” Foxblade said.

“It is,” Grayn said. Suddenly, in unison, six sprays of blood burst from Grayn’s vitals. One from his left jugular, one from his right, one from his heart, one in each of his eyes, and one in his right wrist. Foxblade lowered his arms after releasing his throwing stars and watched his student, the only person on the planet other than his own son with the name Foxblade, fall to the floor, dead.

“Then the Grayn Foxblade I once knew is no more,” Foxblade said. With a heavy sigh, he turned his back and walked back to his team. A point for Team Renegade went onto the board. Jackobi, with a massive sigh of relief, leapt atop the stage to meet his father.

For the final time . . .

In a final burst of yellow, Grayn’s feign had worked. Using his last remaining essence and embracing his lightning form, Grayn’s molecules reset themselves, changing matter itself around him as the throwing stars disappeared and his skin, sliced veins, and vitals repaired, healing him. With a hand hotter than the sun, he threw it forward, straight through Foxblade’s back and out through the front of his chest.

Jackobi stood, frozen, covered in his father’s entrails as Grayn pulled his bloodied hand free from Foxblade’s chest. The Renegade Shininja fell to his knees. Everything happened in slow motion for Jackobi as he caught his father’s lifeless form in his arms. He couldn’t hear the crowd; he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. All was empty, all was dark, all was drowned away as Foxblade’s lifeless, ice blue eyes stared upward at a sky no longer a part of his world.

Jackobi felt his chest rise and fall, waiting for Foxblade’s lips to move, to say one last parting wisdom from father to son, but nothing came. Trying to come to his senses, sucking air into his lungs like water, Jackobi found his eyes rising up into the eyes of Grayn Foxblade, standing over him with a look of calm, cool composure he had only ever seen from his dad.

The two Shininja brothers stood, measuring each other up, and finally Grayn spoke.

“You’re next,” Grayn said.

With that, Grayn Foxblade turned and made his way back to his team without a cut or bruise on him. Blood, Jackobi’s father’s blood, covered him like a crimson victory cloak.

Jackobi watched him go, his heart hammering like a drum, his chest rising and falling like a bull’s. The young Shininja looked at the back of the white haired man with a crazed, boiling bloodlust he didn’t know he had in him.

His genetic makeup wouldn’t allow such feelings to flow through him. He figured that what he felt was nothing but pure, raw, righteous fury. He embraced it like a woman’s touch as he rose to his feet, his father’s lifeless body draped within his arms. Jackobi walked straight through his teammates, not hearing their words or feeling anything other than the righteous fury. That fury would be his only feeling now, his only pleasure, until Grayn Foxblade died by not his daggers, but his father’s daggers in his hands.

Meanwhile, utterly spent, Foxblade Dredka’s last student, Gisbo Falcon, stirred in his sleep, ignorant of the horror he would awake to.

“Let the boy go,” Perry said.

Narroway joined the group, face solemn and white. He was silent for a long minute.

“We need another fighter to present,” Narroway said quietly. “Lamik, he has already rolled.”

Perry said nothing, only tossed the die where he stood, winning the dice roll three to one.

“What do you wish to do?” Narroway said.

“We present,” Falcon said as he stepped up and volunteered himself, walking into the ring, pointing his massive Talon sword at Chieftain Lamik, challenging him outright, much to the cheering crowd.

Chieftain Lamik folded his arms, looking at the man who had defeated him, embarrassed him, and then turned his back. Lamik returned to his team for deliberation and came back to the side of the ring, but not alone.