Welcome to the third installment of the official Azure Striker Gunvolt side story, Fleeting Memories! If you missed any of the previous installments, you can find them here. Enjoy!
Part 3
The two researchers finally arrive at their destination: a single room with a sophisticated electronic lock mechanism. The assistant waved his ID above the lock, scanned his biometrics, and the automatic door began to slide open.
“What in the…?!” He could barely speak.
The assistant felt a chill run down his spine as his eyes were met by other set of eyes, only these eyes were shooting him a sharp, hatred-fueled glare. It was a young boy, completely bound up from head to toe, and left all alone in this strange room.
Kamizono quipped to his assistant, “Pretty messed up, ain’t it?”
It was hard for the assistant to come up with an answer. “All bound up like that…he can’t even so much as lift a finger.”
“You see, the thing is…looking at it as a scientist, it makes my head hurt just thinking about it,” Kamizono explained. “Whether this energy is some sort of mystical power, sorcery, or what have you, I don’t know yet. What I do know is that it’s some kind of mysterious power, and that we need to be able to have that kind of power under our control.”
That is the true purpose behind S-FIT; the big secret behind the myth of the Far East island nation’s impeccable safety record while the rest of the world is in the midst of chaos.
Nowadays, the Sumeragi Group is without a doubt the nation’s most massive and influential conglomerate, but their history goes back over a thousand years. Ever since the Heian period (794-1185), Sumeragi has been involved with people who possess supernatural abilities, like the mystics and shamans attached to the Tetrad (4th) and Quinary (5th) waves of the Lifewave who were quite prevalent during that era.
In order to fully monopolize and control the energies of the Septimal wave, the Sumeragi Group firmly believes that it must head up the global forefront of technology and science. However, the possibility exists that Septimal power stems from mystical and shamanistic powers like those from a bygone era. What that exact source is though, has yet to be discovered even by Sumeragi.
“But, you know boss…” the assistant replied. “Weren’t you the one who perfected these research techniques? You worked tirelessly at it…”
“Tirelessly…heh, you flatter me so,” Kamizono retorted.
Kamizono had a wry smile on his face. That facial expression reminded his assistant of Kamizono’s wife.
“If I recall correctly, isn’t your wife the daughter of the head of the prestigious Kamizono family?”
“Yeah, you could say that…” Kamizono replied.
The name Kamizono is actually the lead researcher’s wife’s family name, not his own. The Kamizono family, while not publicly affiliated with Sumeragi, has quite a bit of political clout in their own right, and an untarnished lineage of spiritual mediums and exorcists. While this was indeed a so-called “marriage of convenience”, and marriages that create political benefit are not unheard of, what separates the Kamizono marriage from many of the others is the fact that the wife’s family name was used.
However, since the heir to the family estate is not Kamizono and his wife, but rather her sister and her sister’s husband, he distances himself from Kamizono family affairs and the amount of patience he has for dealing with such affairs has worn quite thin.
If being completely frank, maybe it’s because of the way that situation evolved, one way or another, his wife always says that like an angel, her son or daughter will not brought up around bad influences. Unfortunately, that turned out to be nothing more than wishful thinking.