Someone Like You
"... I want you dead!"
A hoarse and muffled angry sound burst from Kimiko's throat.
She looked away from Kenji, and ten bony claws shot out in an instant.
He then kicked off with his toes and lunged straight at the Mesmer five meters away.
She knew very well that the other person was Mind Stone manipulator like Cate, the source of the control.
Only by killing him can the "chains" controlling Kenji be broken.
Not far away, the Mesmer saw the direction of Kimiko's attack, and instead of dodging, he smiled and bowed to her.
Just as Kimiko was about to rush in front of the Mesmer, a sudden change occurred.
The dust floating in the corridor suddenly stirred up, and under the light, all the tiny particles began to gather frantically.
It gradually condensed into an eerie blue-fluorescent color.
Immediately afterwards, it began to spin rapidly, using Kenji's raised palm as the center.
As the semi-blue, transparent vortex spun faster and faster, the ground began to tremble.
Soon, cracks appeared under Kenji's feet and spread outwards.
"Ugh!"
Kimiko's momentum did not diminish, and her sharp claws slashed straight towards the center of the vortex.
At the very moment the bone blade slashed downwards, the pale blue psychic field did not exhibit any substantial interaction.
Instead, it resembled a layer of viscous, high-pressure gel, deeply indenting along the blade surface and rippling out in fine blue light waves.
But in the next second, the accumulated recoil force bounced back violently along the bone blade.
"Buzz--"
Kimiko felt a violent tremor in her hand, and her forearm muscles tensed instantly. She gritted her teeth, trying to suppress the momentum.
However, the shock absorption was excessively strong, and the soles of the boots could only slide backwards along the ground.
No, we have to charge through!
With that thought, Kimiko lowered her waist and shoulders, suddenly spread her five fingers, and then fiercely plunged her sharp bone claws into the ground.
"Hiss--"
The claws raked through the concrete, carving out ten and a half finger-deep furrows.
But it didn't stop there.
The force of her telekinesis continued to press down, like a slowly advancing wall of air, pushing her backward with all her might.
Kimiko struggled to lift her head and look at Kenji.
Kenji's empty black eyes held no emotion.
Sluggish, mechanical.
Then, he gently pressed his finger down.
In an instant, all the floating rubble remained suspended, the fragments of varying sizes enveloped in a pale blue light.
It's like a static meteorite belt.
But this state of affairs did not last long.
Kenji simply pointed forward, and a large number of pebbles shot towards Kimiko.
"Whoosh!"
Kimiko sidestepped to avoid the largest piece.
The pebbles grazed her shoulder and struck the wall behind her, instantly creating a dent the size of a fist.
Meanwhile, more debris followed.
Kimiko reacted quickly, swinging her claws to cleave the largest pieces in front of her.
Unfortunately, there were too many fragments, and before Kimiko could dodge, a piece of gravel still hit her left shoulder.
"Hmm..."
The impact penetrated into the bones through the muscles.
Kimiko's left arm went numb, but she gritted her teeth and persevered.
She was unwilling to kill Kenji, but under the Mesmer's manipulation, with Kenji blocking her way, she had no way to strike.
At this moment, the Mesmer stood behind Kenji with his hands behind his back, a sinister smile on his face.
What a touching story of sibling affection!
The Mesmer shook his smooth head and spoke slowly.
"Unfortunately... he only listens to me now."
Kenji raised his left hand in sync with the Mesmer's words.
The next second, the fire pipes on both sides of the corridor walls were instantly torn off their supports by telekinesis.
Soon, two metal tubes, each nearly three meters long, floated into the air, pointing their pointed ends directly in the direction where Kimiko was.
Kimiko took a step back, her sharp claws crossed in front of her.
We can't delay any longer...
She stared at Kenji, her eyes suddenly turning fierce.
Then, with his knees slightly bent and his feet pushing off the ground, he shot forward again like an arrow released from a bow.
Kenji's expression remained unchanged.
He pressed his finger down the instant she started.
Two metal pipes crossed in the air, blocking the way ahead.
Kimiko didn't slow down; as she rushed closer, she suddenly twisted her body ninety degrees and slid past the gap between the two pipes.
The rust from the pipe scraped against the clothes on his waist, leaving a shallow bloodstain through the fabric.
Just as Kimiko was about to rush in front of Kenji.
An invisible force suddenly rose from beneath her feet, like a giant hand, and directly grasped her in its palm.
Immediately afterwards, Kimiko was forcibly lifted into the air by telekinesis, and she tried to use her claws to pierce the wall to stabilize herself.
But his psychic powers had already enveloped his limbs, making each finger feel as heavy as if it were filled with cement, rendering him unable to move.
Not far away, the Mesmer looked at Kimiko suspended in mid-air and nodded with great satisfaction.
"Very well... kill her."
Upon hearing the Mesmer's words, Kenji did not hesitate, and his fingers immediately began to close together.
A powerful psychic force pressed inward from all directions, like a giant python coiling around Kimiko body tightly and then coiling deeper and deeper.
Kimiko couldn't break free, and had no leverage to support her struggle; an overwhelming sense of despair welled up inside her.
"Damn it, let her go!"
Just then, the fire door at the end of the corridor was suddenly kicked open violently.
Frenchie, his face contorted with rage, charged ahead, carrying a modified shotgun.
Cate followed closely behind, and the moment she entered, she used her mental tentacles to lock onto Kimiko.
"Quickly, lower your head!"
Frenchie roared and pulled the trigger.
In an instant, the slug, wreathed in muzzle flash, shot out.
But this seemingly fierce bomb suddenly stopped half a meter behind Kenji.
The high-speed spinning Negasonic Teenage Warhead was like a bullet hitting solidified asphalt; its kinetic energy was rapidly extracted, leaving it hanging alone in the pale blue psychic field.
The next second, as if it had eyes, the Negasonic Teenage Warhead retraced its steps back to Frenchie's location.
"Fuck!"
Frenchie suddenly turned to the side, shrapnel grazing his forearm and tearing it open, leaving a bloody gash.
Before he could even stand up straight, the second wave of psychic attacks came crashing down, pinning him to the wall.
The shotgun in his hand was instantly twisted into a pretzel by an invisible force and forcibly torn from Frenchie's palm.
" Frenchie!"
Seeing this, Cate quickly seized the opportunity to activate all the mental tentacles on her body.
She manipulated her delicate mental tentacles to condense them into steel needles, which she swiftly pierced into Kenji's consciousness.
But just as her mental needle was about to touch the silver-gray mental barrier, a vicious counterforce slammed back from the direction it had come from.
Cate groaned, veins bulging on her temples.
At that moment, the Mesmer in the distance suddenly turned his head, his gaze sweeping over Cate's gleaming eyes, a hint of surprise appearing on his lips.
"Oh... I knew it! I couldn't see through her thoughts and memories."
"So they're the same kind... I'm really curious how Vought could allow a new Mesmer to appear."
Cate kept her lips tightly pressed together and didn't answer, focusing all her energy on all the outward-extending mental tentacles.
She twisted her mental energy into countless fine drill blades, desperately trying to drill into the cracks on the surface of Kenji's consciousness.
Unfortunately, the layer of silvery-gray spiritual energy entrenched at the core was like solidified lead and mercury.
The heavy, cold atmosphere tightly enveloped the mental anchor, leaving it completely still.
Cate knew that if things continued like this, Kimiko would be the first to give out.
Thinking of this, Cate's eyes suddenly turned a thick, bloodshot red, and crimson veins burst open at the edges of her pupils, engulfing her entire iris.
In an instant, she condensed all her tentacles into a huge, solid hammer and slammed it down on the anchor point inside Kenji's skull.
"Act recklessly."
The Mesmer's face darkened, and the five fingers pressing on the back of Kenji's head suddenly tightened.
Silver-gray spiritual energy surged wildly into his fingertips, rapidly coalescing into an impenetrable thick shield on the outer layer of the anchor point.
Then he bravely caught that heavy blow.
Cate's attack did not dissipate after being blocked; instead, it nimbly transformed into scattered threads.
Taking advantage of the Mesmer's momentary pause to catch his breath, he swiftly pierced Kenji's brain.
Seeing this, the Mesmer stopped catching his breath and placed his other hand on Kenji's head.
In Kenji's mental world.
Cate's crimson spiritual energy spread like wildly growing thorns, desperately trying to cover up the Mesmer's gray structure.
The Mesmer, however, was not to be outdone, grinding back with a chilling, malevolent aura like a meat grinder.
The two equally matched spirits, red and gray, clashed continuously, producing a tidal wave of impact after each collision.
Outside of his mental world, Kenji kept rolling his eyes, his body was convulsing, and the veins on the side of his neck bulged out.
Like a zombie infected with a zombie virus, it was exceptionally ferocious.
Not long after, two streams of warm blood suddenly gushed from Kenji's nose, dripping down his chin and onto the ground.
The psychic power surrounding Kimiko fluctuated, causing the suspended pebbles to lose stability and tremble erratically.
At that moment, taking advantage of a moment when her mental power was weakened, Kimiko deliberately bumped into the ground and rolled to the side.
After struggling to her feet, she clutched her throbbing chest and staggered forward.
However, the aftershocks of the out-of-control psychic power were extremely chaotic. As soon as someone got close, they would be mercilessly swatted away by the psychic power, making it impossible for them to get close at all.
After a prolonged mental struggle, Cate was also starting to feel the strain.
Blood slowly trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his vision began to blur.
On the other hand, the Mesmer was not doing well either; veins bulged on his forehead, and blood slowly flowed from his nose.
Now that things have come to this, all we can do is grit our teeth and go all out.
For a moment, two completely opposite thoughts collided and crushed each other repeatedly in Kenji's mind.
Countless chaotic thoughts gradually churned into a boiling paste, quickly reaching the critical point of the consciousness's capacity.
Outside, Kenji's hand suddenly froze, and his whole body began to convulse violently.
When he reached a certain critical point, he suddenly raised his head and let out an extreme roar.
"Ughhhhh!"
At this moment, the psychic power residing within his body broke free from all constraints, its core collapsed, and then it surged and exploded.
Thump!
A violent surge of psychic energy swept across the entire corridor from his center.
Cate was the first to be hit; all her mental links were severed, and she was thrown backward by the shockwave, crashing heavily into the wall behind her.
Mesmer are no exception.
He was the closest to Kenji.
In the midst of the chaos, he erected a mental barrier in front of him, attempting to transform it into a tangible shield to defend himself.
But the barrier shattered instantly, like poor-quality glass, the moment the wave crashed in.
The shockwave hit him right in the face, and he suffered maximum damage from the impact, which was mixed with debris.
After the loud bang, the Mesmer collapsed to the ground like Deadman, his face a bloody mess, clearly beyond saving.
Kimiko, Frenchie, and even Starlight, who is still in prison.
They were all firmly pressed to their feet by this indiscriminate mental force.
It felt like a thousand-pound steel plate was pressing on my chest, leaving me with absolutely no chance to move.
Even the pistol at Frenchie's waist was forcibly pulled out of its holster by an invisible force.
Then it was twisted into a crumpled iron ball in mid-air and crashed to the ground with a "clang".
Cate gritted her teeth, trying to gather a sliver of mental strength to fight back.
But the tentacles had barely reached the edge of consciousness when they were instantly Smash by the violent psychic power.
After a long while, the smoke cleared.
Kenji slowly straightened up amidst the ruins.
His eyes shone with a deep blue light, his pupils as black as ink, blending seamlessly with the blue sclera.
Kenji stared fixedly ahead, his face expressionless.
After his psychic field erupted, it almost solidified into a nearly tangible spherical barrier, and even the surrounding air was distorted and deformed by the pressure inside.
Good news, he... is completely out of control.
The bad news is that he is now completely unconscious, driven only by pure biological instincts.
There is no objective, no friend or foe.
However, any living thing that enters his perception range is designated as a "threat".
Since it's a threat, it must be eliminated quickly.
Soon, the cement layer on the ground began to crack and rise in whole pieces, like tiles being lifted up by an invisible hand, suspended in mid-air.
Kenji ripped the steel bars out of the wall.
It twisted and contorted in the air, contorting into a bizarre spiral shape, before aiming its direction at the location of the group.
Kimiko dug the bone spur into a crack in the ground, staring intently in Kenji's direction.
Cate leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, and for the first time, a look of helplessness appeared in her bloodshot eyes.
As for Frenchie... he's not Superman and couldn't withstand such a wide-ranging impact; he's long since given up on that idea.
Just as everyone was struggling to breathe under the pressure of the telekinetic energy, a flash of red suddenly appeared at the entrance of the corridor.
Cate seemed to realize something, a flicker of unease crossing her blood-red eyes.
She saw it clearly.
It was a blazing red beam of light, slicing diagonally toward Kenji at incredible speed.
The next second, a red light flashed.
Kenji's psychic barrier, which was supposed to be both offensive and defensive, didn't react at all; it was melted through and left with a large hole.
The beam of light hit Kenji squarely in the chest.
"Zzz--"
With a muffled thud, Kenji, his back arched, was sent flying backward, his back slamming hard against the wall at the end of the corridor.
Kenji collapsed, and all the Nen power pressing down on everyone instantly vanished.
Kimiko staggered forward half a step, and Cate groaned before collapsing against the wall to the ground.
The smoke and dust hadn't cleared yet.
When Kimiko looked up, John was already standing in the middle of the corridor.
Today he wore a black trench coat, the hem spotless, and his eyes still held a lingering burning intensity.
Looks like I'm not too late.
(I have a feeling this book is going to fail; not a single comment in two days. Damn you, Mr. Persimmon!!!)