"Store your energy. We don't need to rush this strongly." Kaiyo told the boy who tried to run towards their destination at full speed.
"The faster it's over, the better, right??"
"Think of your surroundings. If Ironskin and a random woman with a sword suddenly run through at full speed, what will the people think? Also, as I said, you should save your energy. They won't run away. We have time."
"I...guess so..." Fudo answered in a defeated tone, waiting to be let down from Kaiyo's grasp.
"Don't go be so down. I can answer the rest of your questions while we're going there. You didn't look like you got all the answers you wanted." Kaiyo chuckled before she dropped Fudo.
"I've got more left than answered. Mainly about Trigram, but also about you and Miyo." He answered while straightening his clothes. "Or that group of yours, with a name that sounds stolen from a shonen manga with a terrible anime adaptation."
"The seven deadly sins aren't really original, to begin with. I tell you every piece of literature has at least one reference to that, and in our case, Miyo just thought it'd be the best name for us, and I agree."
"How did she find you all? I mean, as a team." He looked up at Kaiyo while asking that, but her face suddenly turned into an empty expression. Not because she wanted to avoid that question, it was just because Kaiyo didn't know how to answer it the way Fudo would want it.
"So...it's like seven different roads that at some point align, I can only tell you what I've seen or heard, and I wasn't there from the start... also, I doubt the way is long enough for me to explain it all."
"It's out of town. A harbor warehouse, down at the river. It'll take some time to get there by foot."
Kaiyo sighed after hearing that, but that did tell her that she could tell what Fudo wanted her to tell. She scratched the back of her head, clicking her tongue a few times before she started speaking. "To put it simply, Miyo was a soldier at the company before this all. We're not allowed to talk about the big boss too much, so all I can say is that his esper gives him the ability to survive a long timespan."
"How long? Is there a limit?"
"I'm not allowed to say that, even if I knew it, but let's say he probably drank sake with Oda Nobunaga himself. He was always close to japan's leaders, or government, or whatever."
Fudo didn't comment anything on what she said. He only stared at the ground with a puzzled expression. "Uh...when exactly was that?"
"How should I know? He died in 1582, so before then?" She replied with a face matching Fudo's. "Can I continue?"
"Yeah, sorry for cutting in." Fudo looked around the town the entire time while walking, paying close attention to the alleys. Kaiyo did see and notice that as she glanced down at Fudo, but she didn't question it any further.
"No worries." She said no more than that, putting her hand on Fudo's head with a smirk. "So, where was I...?" Her uplifting smirk gradually turned into an embarrassed one, followed by a constant "uhh" sound, until her face showed that she regained the end of her explanation.
"Ok, as I said, Miyo used to be a soldier, but that was long ago, as the big boss still used to get on missions himself. The boss, Miyo, and the two others stopped being a team around the start of the 20th century because-"
"THE 21TH CENTURY?! IT'S 2025! HOW OLD IS MIYO?" Fudo abruptly stopped walking, staring directly up at the woman who clearly avoided eye contact.
"She's 109, but as far as I know, that's not because of Omoikane... but because she nearly killed the god of time, and they granted her eternal youth when she was 18. So biologically, Miyo is forever 18, but she was born 1916." She dared to look back down at the boy, who naturally had a bewildered and shocked expression.
"Don't look at me like that. I was born in 2000. I don't know more than the stories. If you wanna know about that, ask Miyo. I'm just the storyteller for the sin's story."
"She nearly killed the time god? That one ancient esper?"
"Ah, so you did listen...and no, not that one." She said, looking up to the sky, again followed by another thinking hum. "Do you remember how Miyo told you that the other espers from the first generation either died or turned into planets?"
"I think I remember her saying something like that...?" Fudo hesitantly answered.
"The ones that died chose to stop living, and those that became planets chose to dedicate their life for others beings to gain life. In short, the dead are dead, but the planets are still alive, and those created a barrier. We're on an esper called "Generation 1, Gaia". Gaia allowed to gods that housed here and created the humans to do as they pleased but opened a barrier that keeps the power level to a certain... limit."
"So the god came here for some reason, was affected by that barrier, and randomly got attacked by Miyo?" Fudo's tone and stare both changed. From a shocked and bewildered expression, it became just overly confused.
Kaiyo only answered with a chuckle and a denying gesture with her hand before she answered for real. "I can see the Miyo from back then do that, based on what I heard, but it wasn't quite like that."
Fudo started to slightly smile while scratching the back of his head. "Ok, Kaiyo, the story of your team can wait. Tell me more about this, please."
"Only if you call me mom from now on! This is for that woman to trust Miyo and me after all."
"That's all? Well, tell me more about this all, mom!" Fudo answered near immediately with a sort of provocating smirk, and it seemed to work this time. Kaiyo clicked her tongue at the boy's answer and turned her head away with a slight red tone on her cheeks.
"Didn't think you'd answer that quickly..."
"Aren't you gonna continue, mom?"
"Yeah, yeah, don't get cocky now, you brat." She replied with a beaten smirk. "So, the divine beings all stay in their own dimension, the chaos dimension, the dimension between life and death, you get the picture. For that, the four created their own representing esper. These are from the second generation of espers, so Gaia's barrier affects them. That's what happened to the god Miyo fought."
"I don't think I would've believed these kinds of stories on any other day... gods, own dimensions, magic ghosts... I feel so bad for not believing Aishi."
"Gotta treat her to something as an apology. That always helps me when Miyo starts to act like a child."
"That's...a good idea, I'll see." Fudo sighed. "Back to the story... did the god come for no reason?"
"No...but explaining that might be a bit...hard." Kaiyo answered, scratching her chin while they passed through the town's exit. "Did you watch the Loki series on Kidney+?"
"Heard about it, but we don't have enough money for a subscription...why?"
Kaiyo held her forehead and sighed. "Don't worry about it." She smiled. "So, our world has one... let's call it a time string. It tells everything that has to happen in great detail... it's basically just a script for this world. People that can see the future and People that can time travel are both calculated into that string. Miyo, however, isn't. Miyo goes into a different dimension to read about what will happen. She isn't supposed to know the future, so if she decides to change what she reads, the string starts to distort."
"So the time God came... because Miyo changed the future?" The boy asked.
Kaiyo only nodded while laughing. "Apparently more than once. The first time, even the god herself was way too confused and let her go, the second time, she got away with a warning, and the third time the god lost it and attacked her to stop her from changing the future, but, well... Miyo won the fight."
"...How? Miyo herself said she's not much of a fighter."
"Miyo has an infinite amount of knowledge on her hands, but she has to read the books to access it. Whenever she levels the library, she gains the ability to access more and more of it freely whenever she wants to... of course, alongside some extra abilities. At that time, Miyo already had the ability to read the actions of a person while she fought them, and you can't defeat what you cannot hit. From what I heard, Miyo's battle looked like someone chasing a mosquito that fought back. The god ended up nearly killed by Miyo, and so instead of killing her, the god offered to fulfill one wish in exchange for Miyo to stop. That's how Miyo gained her eternal youth."
"What did the god do with the times she changed the future?"
"It wasn't anything big that would have drastic changes, so the god just changed them back. Miyo also stopped after they made the deal."
"So, Miyo defeated a god by dodging...? Is Miyo like...the strongest person in your company?" Fudo asked, now brimming over with nothing but curiosity.
"She's got power, but it was her skill that made her defeat that god, not her raw strength. In terms of that, even I beat her."
"So...besides that big boss of yours...who's the most powerful?"
After hearing Fudo's question, Kaiyo smirked. In any other case, one would have to have some debates over this topic, but Kaiyo immediately knew it, everyone in Heiwaga did.
"Someone from Miyo's team. A person born at the start of the 19th century. She's become an orphan due to a war back then and was put in a mental hospital in Russia instead of an orphanage. She's a monster, quite literally... I'm getting shivers every time I only think about her and start to shiver every time I'm near her."
"She...does sound like a monster, but that doesn't explain who she is."
"Yeah, yeah, let me continue!" Kaiyo chuckled. " She's been in there for years, her esper came to her with the age of 16, but she still physically aged until 22, then it stopped for some reason. Her name was lost in that very hospital. From what our boss found, she escaped one night and killed not only every staff member but also every other patient. As our boss found her one night, he only found the girl sitting on a mountain of corpses, outsiders, as well as the people from that place."
Fudo stopped commenting. He only stared down at the path they were walking on, shivers running down his spine as he imagined the scene. "So...she's a nameless killer?"
"Disaster level weapon is the definition Heiwaga gave her, not killer. She's on a two-person team with an esper user that matches hers pretty much, and her name isn't lost. It's Z, the survivor. We use her for normal missions...well, those that match her level, but she's way above that."
"What do you mean?"
Kaiyo chuckled again, being somewhat proud of having someone like Z, looking at how she's basically bragging with her. "From what I heard, it would've officially been a war crime if Heiwaga would have let the government use Z as a weapon."
Fudo was noticeably stunned by Kaiyo's story. "As a weapon?! Even if she's so strong... can she survive a battlefield?" He asked while staring up at the woman's eyes.
"That's what you worry about?" Kaiyo started laughing. "Our Z... can survive a nuke!" She loudly exclaimed before both of them stopped a few hundred meters away from a warehouse.
"A... a nuke?!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the rest when we got that Tsubasa guy! Is that our warehouse?" Kaiyo cracked her knuckles while having a wide smirk plastered across her lips.
"It...is, this damn smell I will always remember."