In a room where all of the lights were cut and where it was completely dark as it was night, a boy was sitting cross legged with his eyes closed on the floor.
'Find my inner strength? How am I supposed to do that?'
He's been sitting in this position for 5 minutes and according to Ms. Hibberts, he'd have to be sitting here for another 55, a whole hour.
As he felt frustrated that he was seemingly sitting in this same spot for hours, he couldn't calm down.
He thought of something and tried to grab at something he felt when he was battling Ms. Hibberts.
After finishing the first round against her, Tashiro remembered turning enraged and full of fury while brimming with energy.
His teacher, the Headless Demon, appeared out of thin air and disappeared after the second round. It was supernatural and Tashiro wasn't at all surprised as he's seen his teacher do more inhuman things.
Cutting off a person's head with a hand, piercing through a body with fingernails, and destroying walls was just the tip of the iceberg.
So Tashiro slowly tried controlling his breathing and remembering that feeling during his sudden change.
It felt like faintly recalling a dream hours after waking up. It felt like grabbing at thin fog, looking for a string in the wind.
Usually when recalling a dream, a form of enlightenment was the cause of it, so when trying to grasp at that feeling, Tashiro tried recalling his teacher's strength and feats. So he mixed those images with the feeling of being as enraged as he was during the start of the second battle.
It proved very effective as that faint feeling became more firmly grasped by Tashiro's mental image.
Slowly an outline was made by Tashiro as that feeling slowly became something he felt a closer connection to.
The outline quickly filled in the details automatically as Tashiro instantly grasped a connection with the feeling. His mental image of himself finally grabbed at a thin string that became tight at his grasp and led to another direction.
In the corner of his mind, the outline of the feeling finally fully detailed itself and turned into a flaming red human skull that looked to be of pure anger.
The mental image of Tashiro was enthralled by the abstract image of the skull that changed between so many human images. As he followed the "string" to the other end, it led to a place Tashiro kept so close to him.
His memories.
It led to specifically one memory of a very short man with simple black scarves that covered everything but his red eyes. It was a mystery how those scarves stayed intact.
The man was standing in a room, covered by dead bodies as he looked down at his blood stained hands lifelessly.
Suddenly as if sensing something, the short man turned to look at the Tashiro with a flaming blood red skull floating just above him in a black expanse.
Just at that moment, the memory was like a shattered mirror as glass shards flew everywhere in the dark expanse disappearing into nothingness.
The sudden shock of seeing this memory threw Tashiro out of his calm state of meditation as his eyes peeled open.
In his physical state, he grabbed at his head in pain as his body effused a transparent red flame that wrapped across his body.
'That scarved person is my master, the Headless Demon, isn't it? To think my master left some of his power with me.'
He suddenly paused as he thought of something else. 'My inner strength…'
He sat down again as the transparent red flame turned stronger and stronger. The room started to become a trapped box full of a strange smell.
The room soon entirely became covered in the red flame as Tashiro remained sitting cross legged, not batting an eyelid.
A few minutes later, the flame suddenly retracted as Tashiro jumped up from his sitting position with some delay from a sore leg.
While looking at his hands, he created a firm grip with one of them. The instant he did that, the surrounding air flew into his closed palm before dissipating slowly.
Once that action was performed, Ms. Hibberts entered the room with a face of delight. "That was you, wasn't it? I didn't know you could produce such a powerful presence!"
Tashiro had abundant knowledge in the mentioned field and immediately became embarrassed. "That was actually my teacher's…"
Ms. Hibberts laughed as she patted Tashiro on the back. "Obviously. There's only one person who has that sort of presence: Headless Demon. And you think that I expected a kid like you to do something like that? Haha, you think too highly of yourself."
As they talked with each other, Ms. Hibberts became surprised from discovering that Tashiro's teacher was Headless Demon. At the same time, something was forming in Tashiro's mind.
It was the same mirror that disappeared from cracking into pieces earlier. The memory with the man in scarves instead became replaced with an image of a kid with black hair, green eyes, and a scarf in one hand.
This kid undeniably resembled Ajax greatly.
As it was November of 2021, 2 months before Ajax's mysterious death, nobody had any reaction to Ajax's appearance.
In the mirror, Ajax was sitting in a room with other people, talking with them as a transparent clone was released through his body like a ghost.
The transparent Ajax touched the edge of the mirror that nobody else saw as he peeked through to see the endless world of emptiness, Tashiro's mind world.
In the distance, there sparkled reflections of other mirrors which shone like stars in a night sky.
The kid stepped out of the mirror like it was just a doorway as he stuck out a hand.
With his hand left hanging up, he glanced around the dark world before looking at his hand.
He firmly clenched it and rotated his wrist 90 degrees.
The surroundings turned from that location into a similar one where he was instead directly surrounded by mirrors with much more exquisite designs.
These mirrors reflected scenes different from the others.
One showed the regular human world from a certain height as if a POV. Another reflected a scene that changed into different locations in the deep expanse of mirrors. The others showed similar scenes to the latter.
Ajax looked at the POV mirror and sat on the darkness as if it was a ground.
Through the mirror, he saw what Tashiro saw, felt what he felt, heard what he heard, etc.
He stared directly into the mirror with pure anger shown on his expression and didn't budge.
Ajax eventually spent weeks and months sitting in the darkness, when suddenly a string appeared in front of him, leading to a certain location.
Like a program he executed every action with no emotion but anger as if it was all he could feel. He grabbed on the string tightly as the string suddenly pulled along his body like a kite in complete darkness.
He was dragged through the mind world, passing through tens of thousands of mirrors to eventually land in front of another mirror.
With no expression he once again clenched his hand and rotated it.
It was now December 11, 2021. Tashiro mastered his inner force to use certain techniques efficiently.
He was talking with Ms. Hibberts over a technique while testing it when suddenly a red flame spread across his entire body from his head.
The Ajax filled with anger tore out of Tashiro's body to turn into a floating transparent form, a spirit form. He hovered in front of Tashiro as Tashiro cried in pain.
Ajax directly tore Tashiro's spirit to escape after all. Moments later, Tashiro fell to the ground, grabbing at his heart while suffering a heart attack.
Tashiro's spirit soon arrived in the same parking lot, the other world.
Ajax's anger spirit floated in front of Tashiro as he looked to be under extreme stress. Right now, the angry Ajax was being slowly pulled back into a invisible sphere as he struggled to escape its control.
He failed completely and was pulled through the sphere to also return to the original Ajax which was in the other world's parking lot.
Throughout the Earth that everyone knew, similar spirits of different colors were sucked into the same sphere, making the sky covered in unique colors not too unlike the Northern Lights.
…
In the parking lot where countless kids loitered with only a long white shirt and underwear.
Many people were complaining about their situation in anger and frustration.
It was found out that everyone died at the exact same time. Another fact that was revealed was that everyone that died was previously alive for 13-18 years.
No younger, nor older.
There was even one person that had their 19th birthday only the next day and they still died.
Many spread their assumptions on that they truly were in another world and seriously died in their previous world.
Many preached this to be the truth until proved otherwise.
Almost everyone complained on their lack of food, clothing, and a safe environment fit for living.
Almost at the same time as mass hysteria was going to develop from this same problem, countless voices yelped in surprise as the familiar hovering blue screen revealed another message.
[Shop now available. Quest storyline revealed.]
At the same time, besides the Ajax who was talking with a few other children, the same message appeared which brought the now lifeless expression of Ajax to only spare a glance. He ignored it for the moment as he pointed at each person one by one.
"You're Thing 1. You're Thing 2. And you're Thing 3."
The three children that were pointed at didn't reveal any expression other than pure happiness.
Ajax continued, "Now hold hands."