Part 2

Fig. 08

My body entered the second stage of the cat-human fusion. My two arms merged with my two front legs, which saved more energy that way. The stream of water coming out of my mouth became much stronger. The flow rate increased, and so did the pressure. By now, the hallway floor was already covered in water, and the air was full of vapor. The matrix made of his 0s and 1s was almost blown apart by my water stream, but it still held together with surprising toughness. His suit was already soaked through. He took off his suit and tie, then pulled off his shirt too, facing me directly in just a tank top.

He said, “Not many people can push me to the point where I have to strip down this much to fight. Last time was with my old man. You cat-clan folks really are a pain.”

Fig. 09

Then he released a new fire-style move: Fire Chain.

He said, “The temperature of my Fire Chain is high enough to burn straight through the walls of this hospital. Once it wraps around you, I’m afraid your soul won’t be able to escape from your body.”

I said, “Wow. What you’re showing me is the chain of side effects. A drug prescribed by the doctors in Department A causes side effects managed by Department B. Then to treat that side effect, you have to take medicine from Department B, which creates another side effect managed by Department C. And on and on it goes, with no end.”

He said, “That’s how it is in the 4th-tier city. In the 1st-tier city, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. You just haven’t seen enough.”

I said, “Oh really? Then why don’t you go to the 1st-tier city for every problem, whether big or small? Do you think the subway there has enough room for you to sit on the floor and play with your phone?”

He said, “Who was playing with a phone? We were reading documents sent down by our training supervisors. Every second counted.”

I said, “What I don’t get is this. Sure, Brandon Superior was an internet celebrity. But what made you think he could cure your autoimmune disease?”

He said, “Brandon was already a genius student back when we were in school. He knew I was always missing classes because of pain, and that I often couldn’t even take PE. On exam days I still had to take medication. Back then he told me he would definitely develop a method to cure my problem at the root. And last year, he told me that method was already close to success. But then you killed him.”

I said, “What method? Brainwashing? Suppressing local pain through the central nervous system?”

He said, “Cut the crap. It was chakra thread embedding. He told me that this original method had already worked successfully on you. Once he built up a few more cases, he’d dare to use it on me. But you got him killed, and now the hope in my life is gone again.”

I said, “What? At the time, he told me that method was already very mature. That’s why I dared to do it. So he was using me as a lab rat? And honestly, it wasn’t that miraculous anyway. It only lasted a month or two. Then the pain came back. At first I thought he could fix the root of the problem, but later I realized he had never even found the root cause. He was just trying out these self-invented methods at vulnerable targets. At the time he even pulled a shadow-clone-style move. It was like two of him were holding me down together.”

He said, “Stop talking nonsense. He told me that method would definitely work. Just because it didn’t work on you doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work on me. Enough talk. Let me show you a stronger jutsu.”

Fig. 10

Then the flames coming out of his mouth began to change shape and expand, turning into a tree structure.

He said, “See that? This is Fire Tree. Once a tree starts expanding, it can reach more space. There’s nowhere to hide.”

I said, “Fire Tree? So is this a decision tree or an evolutionary tree?”

He said, “Of course it’s a decision tree.”

I said, “Oh, I get it. Kind of like AI diagnosis. You ask the patient one question after another, rank the questions by how much variance they can explain, and in the end AI replaces all the internal medicine doctors in your hospital.”

He said, “In your dreams. This is just clinical support. Doctors aren’t that easy to replace. Seeing patients is not just about filling out a questionnaire.”

I said, “Or maybe it’s like those pyramid schemes in the wellness industry. Senior members recruit junior members, and the business keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

He said, “Don’t lump our legitimate hospital together with those pyramid-scheme people, OK?”

I said, “Don’t forget, back then Brandon Superior was running training sessions at your hospital at night, preaching to female medical staff. That was also a structure where old members pulled in new members, right?”

He said, “I won’t let you talk about Brandon like that! The things he taught were way beyond the understanding of someone like you!”

I said, “Right, so you definitely knew about all that too. You weren’t his accomplice, were you?”

He said, “No. Don’t talk nonsense. That was his business. It wasn’t my place to interfere.”

I said, “Oh, so you were covering for him, just so he could cure your illness? In that case, I’d better upgrade my water-style jutsu too, so I can deal with your tree structure.”

Fig. 11

The stream of water coming out of my mouth gradually turned into bubbles. They spread in the form of transverse waves, some big, some small, with different wavelengths, different amplitudes, and different frequencies. When the bubbles hit his high-temperature flames, they burst and used up the fire-style chakra on his side. Very soon, he was already breathing hard.

He said, “Why are your bubbles so organized? They don’t look that big, but they’ve brought the temperature of the flames down a lot.”

I said, “Heh. This is the new water-style jutsu I developed: Water Fourier Series. I designed it specifically for your tree structure. The diameter and thickness of the bubbles both have to increase in proportion, so they can deal with nodes at different levels inside your Fire Tree.”

He said, “When I saw you in those videos, I thought you were just some punk. Didn’t expect you to know this much. It’s obvious the little cosmos in your body has helped you a lot.”

I said, “Yeah. Only by connecting to the power of the universe can I use strings to deal with you.”

He said, “What? Now you’re even bringing string theory into this? Stop showing off. Be careful or those in powermay start watching you.”

I said, “Are you scared? Didn’t expect someone to crack the fire-style jutsu you designed, did you? I think you should surrender now. If you use up too much of your clan’s chakra, you’ll end up destroying yourself. Learn something from Itachi Uchiha.”

He said, “Surrender? You’ve got to be kidding. Do you know how many risks I’ve taken over the years to help Brandon? What do you think I did all that for? Do you even know that in this hospital, even Dr. Divine is afraid of me?”

I said, “Dr. Divine is afraid of you because he knows Brandon Superior was always eyeing his position. And he also knows you and Brandon were too close, so you might help Brandon go after him. Someone told me there aren’t many people in this hospital with fire-style chakra.”

He said, “What do you mean, too close? I already told you, I was just helping my buddy. And yes, I had my own motives too. Dr. Divine is afraid of me because I’m in IT. I can see statistics and metrics that other departments can’t see. I have dirt on them. Dr. Divine keeps the data in his own office isolated from me. He even uses a separate internet line.”

I said, “Yeah. Hiring someone who understands data into your own hospital is a double-edged sword. It’s like how emperors in ancient times were always wary of their subordinates. And for someone like Brandon Superior, all kinds of data probably worked against him, right?”

He said, “Yeah. With a personality like his, he even dared to provoke his own mentor, and he ran sessions inside the hospital, basically pushing Dr. Divine aside. Someone as arrogant as him — you already know what he was like with patients.”

I said, “I was his patient. Of course I know what kind of person he was. Even like that, he still became an internet celebrity? You people helped make that happen too, didn’t you?”

He said, “Yeah… I regret that too. Once he got famous, his temper got even worse, and he kept ignoring my messages.”

I said, “That’s because he was using you from beginning to end. He controlled you and used you. All you could do was use your professional skills to help turn him into a celebrity, and also help him alter the statistics. But whenever you needed his help, he brushed you off with one excuse after another. Right?”

He said, “How do you know I helped him alter the statistics? When did I ever say that?”

I said, “I guessed it. If he had something to hide, of course he needed your help changing it.”

He said, “You know too much. I can’t let you stay alive. You almost wiped out my whole tree, so now I can only add in the power of my other blade too. Release, Computing Power Knife.”

Fig. 12

His other phone turned into a black zanpakuto. From its shape alone, it looked like Ichigo Kurosaki’s Tensa Zangetsu. All of a sudden, the flames in that decision tree split into a much denser pattern. It no longer looked dazzling, but the whole hallway started to melt. I could clearly feel the water under my feet getting hot, so I had no choice but to keep adjusting the diameter of the bubbles and the speed of the waves.

He said, “See that? You can’t hold on anymore, can you? This is the ultimate version of my hidden Fire Tree: Fire Fractals. No more messy branches. This is beauty completely aligned with the laws of nature.”

I said, “Wow. To control entropy at that level, how much energy do you have to burn? You’re not seriously going to burn through all your mitochondria, are you? Are you sure you don’t want to stay alive?”

He said, “Don’t worry about that. I pulled out the Computing Power Knifetoday because I’m determined to kill you. The last time I used this blade was when I got into a fight with relatives in my clan when I was younger.”

I said, “You’re carrying so many complicated social relationships on your back. Now I can also understand why your autoimmune system never gets better. Even if there were a few more Brandon Superiors, they still wouldn’t be able to cure your illness.

He said, “There you go again, talking nonsense. I know Brandon’s abilities very well. You’re saying all this just to cover up your own guilt. Look. The moment your bubbles touch my Fire Fractals, they disappear on their own. You have no chance of winning. The energy level at every node here changes dynamically. It’s not like the original decision tree.”

Fig. 13

He took off his glasses and let out a long sigh toward the ceiling. It was obvious that he was almost out of strength. You could imagine how much energy it must take to create those dynamic fire fractals. At this point, his spine was probably enduring a level of pain most people could not tolerate.

I said, “If you can’t hold on, then give up now. There’s no need to drag all your symptoms out just for one fight.”

He said, “Yeah, people are that contradictory. Sometimes I also wonder whether I would still have this disease if I didn’t have fire chakra in my body. But it’s exactly because I have this kind of chakra that people around me don’t dare mess with me. Even the hospital director keeps his distance from me. But there’s no going back now. You already know almost all my secrets. A person like you would never keep your mouth shut.”

I said, “Heh. Fair point. If I didn’t have water chakra in my body, maybe I wouldn’t have spent all these years being weighed down by dampness either. But it’s exactly because I have this kind of chakra that people around me think I’m easy to fool and easy to bully. In the end, though, they either get contaminated by me, get penetrated by me, get steamed by me, or get slammed by me…”

Fig. 14

Seeing that he was running out of strength, I quickly launched a new round of attacks: Water Wavelets. I tuned this move specifically to deal with Fire Fractals. I split the water into several streams. The force was more direct, but the variety of frequencies was clearly reduced. I knew I did not have computing power at his level, so I had to simplify.

He said, “So you replaced the Fourier transform with wavelets at a few different scales. That really does save computing power. And from what I can see, they’re all dyadic wavelets, right? To use sage chakra like this — the sages would be proud of you. Heh.”

I said, “You got it wrong. This is not sage chakra. This is spiritual power from the Soul Reapers and the Quincies, built up from Dr. Warm’s bullets. I’m the kind of person who believes in low carbon and not wasting energy, unlike certain people. Even if it were sage chakra, it would still be borrowed from nature. Natural power is like taxpayer money. It isn’t unlimited. In the end, whatever you owe to nature, you have to pay back. That’s the karma of the universe.”

He said, “What I use is my own energy too. I don’t owe anybody.”

I said, “Are you sure? You helped Brandon Superior do bad things. You altered data for him. What you owe is owed to all the patients.”

He said, “What did you say? I was only trying to get my illness cured. I didn’t want to alter the data either. Logging in with that level of access leaves a record in the logfile, and I had no idea whether that record would get passed to Dr. Divine. I was taking a real risk. But every time he asked me to help, he told me his research was almost done, and that soon he would be able to do the chakra thread embedding for me. He told me that the substrate for the chakra threads had been obtained through personal connections from a pirate-school hospital in the 1st-tier city. You couldn’t even buy it in the second-tier city.”

I kept spraying water. The hallway was still burning hot, but his fractal-shaped flames were already starting to fade.

I said, “You remind me of the female class monitor I had in middle school. Right in front of me, she changed the boy’s Arts grade from B to A because she had a crush on him. That way he could qualify as an Honor Student. When you go that far for one person, it’s no longer just favoritism and cheating. The way I see it, what you felt for him can’t be summed up as fraternity.”

He said, “Can you stop doing this already? What I felt for him is my business. You wouldn’t understand how much I gave for him. But I’m not going to let you off just because you’re trying to provoke me. I’m going to make you experience what ultimate-form fire-style jutsu really looks like. Stop trying to read other people’s hearts and interfere in their private lives. My next jutsu will leave you nowhere to run.”

Suddenly, the Computing Power Knife in his hand crumbled into ashes, and Fire Fractals stopped glowing. My Water Wavelets soaked his clothes, but the water was instantly evaporated by the heat. There was not a single trace of water left on his body. Instead, he looked slick and shiny, almost like a bodybuilder in competition shape.

I thought to myself: this is bad. He’s about to ignite himself.

End of part 2.

This is a creative project inspired by the traditions of Eastern shonen manga and Western comics and cinematic storytelling.

All characters, abilities, and world elements are original creations.

Any similarities to existing works are coincidental or intended as respectful homage, without any claim of ownership or affiliation.

I’m open to legitimate collaboration on various levels.