This sucks. I thought as I flipped over in bed with a groan. The soft mattress beneath me felt unfamiliar, my body slightly sinking into the cushion.
My mind looped as I tried to focus on the reality of my situation.
Which was… nothing.
I had no identity, no connections, and no purpose.
The world had no place for me, and it reminded me of that fact every chance it got.
Bright sunlight pierced through the curtains of the room I was staying in at the Pokécenter, forcing me to groan as I shrank deeper under the darkness of the covers.
Kishin leaned against the foot of the metal frame, his eye glowing a tired purple as he watched me rot away with my head buried in a pillow. I could sense the slight gaze of discontent from the sword, irritated that he was forced to waste daylight due to his partner's sloth.
After a few minutes, the feeling of being watched crawled across the back of my head as the intensity of Kishin's staring increased. Suddenly, wisps of restlessness and boredom washed over me, causing my muscles to twitch in search of physical stimulation.
"Hey! Stop doing that!"
I burst from the cocoon of warmth, shaking off the emotions flooding through the connection of Destiny Bond. The chill of the room hit my skin, clearing the last traces of sleep and drowsiness from my body.
"Shi shi shi shi!"
Kishin's hollow laughter echoed throughout the room, his singular eye squinting in amusement at my rebuke. His spectral tassels wiggled like ribbons billowing through the wind, taunting me with a mischievous gleam in his steel.
What are you going to do about it? he seemed to declare, the pupil of his eye shrinking into a mocking pinprick.
"I'll throw you straight down a latrine pit."
The threat crawled from my throat as a growl.
Kishin's expression froze. Or as much expression a sword could show anyways.
His cloth arms immediately ceased their flamboyant display, returning to wrap tightly around his obsidian sheath as he recalled the time I followed through with my threat–dropping him into a mountain of Miltank manure for a prank he pulled on me in the middle of a guild meeting.
The blade shivered in disgust.
"What's wrong? Why aren't you laughing anymore?" I walked up to the end of the bed, grabbing his hilt and bringing him up to my eye level. "You scared?"
Kishin's hilt tensely vibrated under the grip of my palm. The sword sweatdropped, a bead of spectral energy dripped down the metal of his guard as he mimicked the expression he saw on humans.
One of his tassels patted me on the shoulder, trying to appease my "rage" before I did anything rash. The room filled with the sound of his nervous laughter.
A smile crept up the corner of my lips as I returned Kishin to his spot at my waist.
"Alright, fine. Let's go out and train. It felt revolting laying in bed all day anyways."
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Pokécenter had a small dirt training field in the back.
I stepped onto the dry earth, the flat of my boots kicking up a small cloud of dust. I briefly closed my eyes, feeling a slight breeze pass through my hair, rattling the leaves of the trees around us.
The sun was blazing at its peak in the sky, unobstructed by clouds. I squinted under its harsh light.
Kishin's vibration shifted my attention downwards. His tassels wrapped around my left forearm, squeezing lightly to show his impatience.
"...Alright! We'll begin."
I drew him from his sheath, his blade clearing the throat of the scabbard with a metallic hiss.
"Shadow Clone."
Kishin's shadow swelled, consuming the light in the area beneath my feet before splitting into two. Half of the shadow crawled up my leg, snaking around my left arm into my open and waiting palm.
The shadow elongated, stretching in empty space, and as the inky darkness cleared, and my fingers enclosed around another sword—a perfect mirror image of Kishin in my left hand.
"Commencing combat training." I whispered to the wind, familiar with the process.
The faux Kishin was thrown into the dirt in front of me, lodging its blade into the earth with a dull thud.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the shadow of the katana began to shift, rising in a slow inky sludge that consumed the entire sword, before erupting into a storm. Mirages and distortions swirled around the pillar of darkness, warping the nearby light as it expanded, devouring more of the space around it.
The darkness began to recede, folding into itself. The ink compressed, swirling into limbs, finger forming at the ends. From the depths, the rest of its features emerged one by one until I was facing a shadowy clone of myself directly in front of me, its pupils dull and lifeless in its sockets.
I waited.
It raised its right arm to its chest, positioning its fingers directly over its heart, before plunging its hand into the void of its body.
Its finger wrapped itself around the gold handle of the sword that made up its core, ripping free the katana with a grotesque, splattering tear.
It flicked the dark residue from the edge of the blade, its empty eyes never leaving mine.
So it doesn't have the Rift. I thought as I checked the area at its chest. I suppose it doesn't have the Temporal Desync either.
"Come on."
My gaze hardened as I got into a combat stance. Kishin wrapped around my arm, reinforcing my grip.
The shadow lunged. Its sword carved an arc through the air as it curved towards the right side of my neck.
"Ugh…" I tiled Kishin up to parry the blade, sparks burst as steel flashed against steel. I shifted my weight forward, leaning into the force as the shadow's sword slid down Kishin's edge. Its blade exited the length of our steel as the clone lost its balance, lurching slightly forward.
My grip immediately solidified on the hilt as I brought down Kishin in a decisive cleave aimed at its exposed neck. Strength surged through my arms as I channeled the power of Strong Style through Kishin, his edge emitting the wispy aura of Shadow Claw.
"Kitsune."
The name of a Spirit Style technique rang out in the midst of the fight, a voice belonging to me, but not mine.
The earth around erupted into a blinding cloud of dust as I struck empty air. The Rift-Eye at my heart flickered to life as my eyes shifted to a neon purple, silhouettes of the surrounding trees and rocks became highlighted in my vision.
And in the middle of it all was the shadow, sword sheathed, crouching down in a sword stance all too familiar.
It drew its katana, the outline of the blade visible despite the storm of dirt and debris. With two hands gripping its sword, my clone dashed forward like a rushing gale.
"Tengu."
"Nurikabe!"
I meet the slicing whirlwind with Kishin's iron-clad pauldron, the impact smashing into me with an echoing boom. I braced as a cyclone of slashes rained down on the steel wall in front of me, causing the soles of my boots to carve trails in the ground as the immense force slowly pushed me back.
As the onslaught ended, I felt the rush of kinetic energy surge through my entire body via the connection to the floating armor. Immediately, I spun, all my strength and momentum traveled through my arms, welling up into Kishin's blade.
The pauldron retreated to my left shoulder, as I rotated my body 180 degrees clockwise, both my hands tight on Kishin's hilt as I pivoted and rendered its abdomen.
"Oni. Strong Style."
In the void, the shadow's dead, emotionless voice rang out once again.
My movements faltered as my eyes fell upon the clone's form. The false sword was raised high above its head, surging with a blood-crimson aura that seemed to scorch the air around it.
I got careless. I forgot I was fighting against my techniques and experiences fused with something inhuman.
A strained grin warped my lips.
The guillotine fell, the blade's path seeking to cleave my body into two halves. I swiftly leaned back, trying to shift my weight backwards to prevent a majority of the damage from the slash and impact.
Then the Red Chain glowed. It's light washing over me as the tip of the shadow's katana reached the surface of my chest.
I felt it. My body seemed to disconnect from reality, the tips of my limbs bursting out in digital sparks as the blade buried its steel into my flesh, cleaving cleanly to the other side.
Blood poured and pain filled the area where I was slashed, splattering across my haori and the twine of the Red Chain across my neck.
The glowing jewel was stained with a mix of silver and crimson, causing it to radiate brighter.
The cut distorted, the edges of the bleeding wound digitized, glitching. Partsof my chest flickered in and out of existence, trading places with exposed flesh, blood and ichor.
I froze as I watched.
The silver-stained jewel of the Red Chain against my throat lets out a high-pitched, harmonic pulse—a command that overrides the physical world.
In an instant, the "glitch" consumed the entire laceration. The deep, life-threatening chasm in my chest snapped shut with the sharp, artificial, static hum of a Porygon Z, leaving behind nothing but a faint, glowing seam that quickly dissolved into the fabric of my haori.
The blood splattered across my clothes remains—a grim, wet reminder of the steel that was just buried in me—but the pain vanished as if the nerves themselves were simply deleted from the system.
I stood there, my heart hammering against a ribcage that shouldn't be intact, my body feeling strangely light and hollow, as if my very atoms have been compressed and optimized.
I was whole, yet I feel fundamentally unreal.
The clone didn't wait for my existential crisis to end. It adjusted its grip, the crimson aura of the Strong Style still bleeding from its blade as it prepared a follow-up thrust.
But as it moves, I feel a strange, stuttering pull in my core. My vision fractured, showing me the world in overlapping frames of "here" and "not here."
I moved.
As the clone's sword lunges toward my throat, I lean into the glitch. My body doesn't meet the steel; it broke apart into a swarm of violet-and-silver pixels.
For a heartbeat, the sensation of wind, weight, and even the dry earth beneath my boots vanished. I flashed directly through the clone's inky mass—a sickening, static-filled sensation of passing through cold water—and reassembled in the air behind it.
The transition was instantaneous. One moment I was a ghost—the next, the weight of Kishin is heavy and real in my hands.
The clone was still mid-thrust, its lifeless eyes staring at the empty space where I used to be. I didn't give it a chance to recalculate.
Before the last of the digital sparks could leave my fingertips, I brought Kishin around in a horizontal arc. The blade hummed with the residue of the Red Chain's power, cutting through the shadow's neck like a hot steel through wax.
There was no resistance. No bone, no gristle. Just a soft hiss as the connection between the clone's head and its core was severed.
The shadowy form freezes. The crimson aura sputters and dies, replaced by a rapid, violent flickering.
Then, with the sound like an extinguishing flame, the clone implodes, dissolving into a cloud of spectral ash that dissolved in the wind.
Silence returns to the clearing, save for the deep thudding of my heart and the rhythmic, predatory hum of the chain against my skin.
I stand over the spot where I almost died, looking down at the bloodstains on my haori that marked a wound that no longer exists.
With a slow breath, I flick the phantom residue from Kishin's edge and guide the blade back into its scabbard. The metallic click of the guard meeting the throat of the sheath echoes through the trees, signaling the end of the session.
I was alive. But as I touched my chest, feeling the smooth, unscarred fabric, I couldn't help but wonder if "I" was still entirely human.