“Where are you taking him?” Ken asked as he watched two officers drag a man along the street. The man was screaming that he didn’t know magic. Although all the talk of how dangerous the poets are was inescapable, since Ken never saw one for himself, he never found himself taking a position on the issue. This was the first time he had seen somebody being dragged against their will because of their writing and he naturally felt bad. The officers ignored his question.

“Hey!” Ken exclaimed this time. “What did he do wrong?”

One of the officers let go of the man and immediately drew his gun, pointing it at Ken’s face. He froze and observed the gun, noticing that it was something completely out of the ordinary. It looked like a cross between a pistol and a shotgun. The barrel was short, but wide and had a steel rod within it, no longer than the barrel. Bullets don’t come out of that, Ken thought, puzzled. He then suddenly remembered some things he’s heard about the police force, especially since they started taking poets more seriously. They had much more powerful weapons than they did in the past, ones that could cause instant, but temporary paralysis. The gun must be one of them, Ken thought, seeing the other officer drop the man. He didn’t move.

“You know defenders of poets can be arrested to, right?” the officer asked, glaring at him.

“I just wanted to know what he did wrong?”

“Are you defending him?”

Ken was taken aback by the bluntness of his question. He looked at the so-called poet and noted that his spirit energy level was very low. He didn’t know how the magic of poetry worked, but he knew that most users of magic had high spirit levels, depending on the type of magic. However, the man accused was no stronger than the average person. He was innocent. “He’s too weak to be a poet,” Ken replied. “His energy is too low.”

“His what?” the officer asked angrily. “You trying to be a smartass? I should punch you in the gut!”

Ken grimaced and clenched his fist. “You’d be making a huge mistake.”

The officer’s eyes widened his surprise as he lowered his gun. Rage quickly overtook him and it was clear that he was just seconds away from lunging at Ken when the other officer put his hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I knew it recognized you from somewhere,” he said. “You’re Ken Ikeda. The MMA champion.” The angry officer was looking at his partner, annoyed. Ken hadn’t been recognized since he started training with Iraltiphos. He had almost forgotten that a significant amount of people knew who he was.

“I don’t care who he is,” the angry officer replied.

“Relax,” his partner said. He then turned to Ken. “I know it looks crappy, but we can’t have people writing poetry. We can’t know if they’re dangerous or not.”

“You paralyzed him,” Ken replied.

“We can’t take chances. Especially in Japan, after what happened. We’re just taking him to be questioned. The innocent are always freed. I know you understand.”

Ken had a feeling that he was lying, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if it was even his responsibility to do anything. The officers took his silence as a sign that they could continue without protest and proceeded to resume carrying the man away. Ken was left alone feeling like he had just done something terribly wrong.

He approached Iraltiphos’ home and training grounds. Usually he’d be able to detect his master’s presence, but there was nothing. He dismissed it as being too far away, but once he reached the front door and still didn’t detect him, he figured he wasn’t there at all. He opened the door and took a peek inside. Nobody was there. He walked behind the home and into the backyard, where Iraltiphos was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, eyes closed and shirtless. Focusing so much on trying to detect his spiritual presence, Ken had completely missed that he was right under his nose the entire time. Even as he looked right at him, he couldn’t detect any spiritual presence. It was like he was invisible. Must be some extreme energy suppression, Ken thought. He also had never seen him with his shirt off, noticing that writing was etched into his skin at various locations.

“I never took you for a tattoo kind of person,” Ken said with a grin. Iraltiphos’ eyes snapped open and he immediately stood up, grabbing his shirt and putting it back on quickly. He didn’t answer. Ken’s grin faded. “It was like you were invisible just now. How did you do that?”

“Practice,” he replied flatly. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at him after a long silence. “We won’t be training today.”

“Oh,” Ken replied, puzzled. He had never cancelled a training session before, so he didn’t know how to respond. He figured there may be a catch, so he just stood there, waiting for him to say something else. There was only an awkward silence. “Should I just… come back tomorrow then?”

“We won’t be training tomorrow either.” Ken’s heart quickened. “I know you’ve only been here for two years, but there isn’t any time left,” Iraltiphos added grimly. “If you remember me saying, I’ve only had one student before you. Every day I regret not snapping his god damn neck.”

A chill went down Ken’s spine, although he didn’t know how anything of his statements was related. He had never seen him show hatred for anybody before and it scared him. 

“What did he do?”

“We had… fundamental disagreements,” he replied. “I don’t know why I brought it up,” he added, appearing to be emotionally unstable. “What’s important is that you know your power is your own. You probably won’t remember this in a couple of days, but you must try. Nobody can take your power away from you.”

“What are you talking about? What’s going on?” Ken asked, suddenly hearing waves crashing against the rocks. Iraltiphos lived right by the shore, but he had never heard the waves be this loud before.

“The end of everything.”

[i]Ken Ikeda’s flashback has ended.[/i]