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Volume 4

Chapter 02: Stage One

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Rex woke up, head in pain, but ignored it all as he made his way to the sala where he leaned his back and just let the soft feel of the back support caress his worn down soul.

He closed his eyes, attempting to manually repair his pulsing temples.

But pain registered to him more times than he could repair them and drifted into sleep, not knowing how the time left him there.

When he opened his eyes, Manang Fe was already in the house and she was fixing anything that needed a fixing, cleaning anything needed cleaning, and even bringing down dirty laundry from his room upstairs.

"You awake now?" She went to the kitchen door and dumped everything she carried into the washing machine in the wash room. "I already cooked you a food set, again, so you're welcome."

Rex glanced up right above the door. It was 7 sharp in the morning

—Three hours?

He massaged his temples, eyes, and then his aching or sort of tingling left knee.

The metal support connected to the mechanical arm and lever beside his knee was touching the skin and the cold metal felt hot in his senses.

—Am I sick?

He wondered and waved his left hand down to get a medical window, going towards the thermometer function and waited for the result.

A scan came from the [email protected] TV in front of him and the result was displayed on the window he pulled down.

—Normal.

He scanned himself, mentally, and he confirmed that there was something wrong. Rex closed his eyes and the surrounding city noise and bickering neighbors, chirping birds greeting each other, the sound of the washing machine a few meters away, and even the sense of touch on his hands, all disappeared in the sensation he last remembered before falling asleep.

Anger. Rage. Confusion. Desperation... and a whole lot of other emotions that swelled up in his chest, all sealed in a corner of his mind as if it belonged to a whole other person, was there.

He could feel his skin crawling with the coldness of his wrath. He wanted to dissect someone and then burn his body using black fires. From that single point in his mind, a single name popped up.

"Jack."

"Hmm? You said something?"

Manag Fe peeked from the door. She was weirdly friendly. This behavior from her started ever since he nearly died that...

—That day.

Why did he even risked his life that day?

He snapped out of his safety net and just wanted to stop the Lapis from... from rampaging to...

—To what?

There was Garin. He could remember his face. He remembered his name. He was angry at him and his group —or her group, Cassiopeia's, at that— for the trouble they went to trap him into some unknown forest but now he was actually thankful for them that his search for the Anazon Forest is over.

—or made easier at that.

So now, where does this rage coming from?

Oh. Yes. To that one named Jack. He stole the one and only thing, the first thing that could save Baron.

—No.

The one that he was supposed to pay for the one that will save Baron.

He stole it. He stole Excalibur. He stole the key to Baron's safety and his ticket to recovery.

"JACK!"

THUD!

"Whoaaa..."

"Hey, hey, hey... time out will ya?"

When Rex opened his eyes again, he was already in the usual «chair» with nodes, sensors, and a bunch of newer and more advanced gadgets and cars of boxed machines for his medical treatment.

Rex saw Hank McCullers holding his right fist and his twin, Frank, on his left foot pushed down by his own.

Confused, Rex looked around him and pulled his 'weapons' from the contact and buzzed almost, microscopically, silent.

"I-I'm sorry. I... am I... am I dreaming?"

The twin doctors looked at each other and nodded.

"Yeah," Frank spoke first. "Maybe."

"Well, as soon as we arrived, you walked out of the door like a soulless Rex and then sat down here like a silent boy."

"We thought you just woke up because Manang Fe said that you fell asleep in the couch."

"So we went on and plugged you in."

"Yep. Plugged you in alright."

Rex touched his chest and felt the node sucking his skin. "So... is my... scans going to be starting now since I feel a bit hungry."

Again, the twins looked at each other and when they faced Rex again, they were wearing concerned faces.

Curiously, Doctor Martinez behind the twins was the one who answered him,

"Start the scans again."

"Again? Wait what's..."

With no other words spoken, Frank pressed a few nerve points on his chest and neck and Hank tapped a few places on his back and head.

Another beeping sound came from the beeping machine beside him and Rex felt his consciousness fade in the dim light of day.

Back in the dream world where he was looking for answers. Back into the place he, and only he knew.

**********************

"What was that?" Hank looked at his brother beside him and then behind him to Martinez. "It's as if he's on a different world just while ago."

But Martinez's hand was moving on a floating panel and he was too busy looking at the results of his act than to look at the twins.

Although he stretched out a hand and pointed at Rex.

No. To be precise, he was pointing beyond Rex, to the door, to the small box behind the door.

"I need the data from the last neural scan from the time he logged out today."

Frank moved his feet at the order and Hank then put up a panel and swiped it off to the direction of the thumbing-up Frank.

A panel opened up in front of Hank and he curled his confused brows more as he swiped the panel off to the busy doctor.

"This is odd." Martinez massaged his short chin hairs, eyes scrolling up and down to the sight of the words and graphs in the panel. "It's the same anger- driven him in there."

"Anger-driven... doc, have you noticed anything else weird in the graph?" At Hank's pause, he summoned his own panel with the same data and the twins looked at them with bewilderment. "Could you think that his anger days are going too often?"

Frank did the same chin massage. "Hmm, in our art, it's what we'd call Ahura... and for some reason, it is a path to gain strength through the use of rage."

"Yeah but," Hank then studied the graph. There was a group that was in the exact border of normal and yellow caution, aligned in the group of reactions that belonged to the 'rage' cluster, controlling hate, at the negative emotions' neural region in the brain. "It is a very hard state to achieve requiring hard training and a deep emotional root that serves as anchor for the mind and soul."

"But the Ahura State is a fragile boundary. A single mistake can lead to a disaster giving birth to a man that can be dubbed as a Demon Lord."

"Well, it only happens if the anchor is touched."

"Or like when it disappears."

"...or when severed, the subject will attain the true and complete Path of The Asura."

"...which in turn consumes the body and..."

"...turns the subject into a..."

With the twins' self-absorbed monologues, the two glanced at Rex and grinned ear-wide.

""Whoaaaa.""

The twins spoke together, grinned, and clapped their hands together as if in a victory pose inside the control center of a successful rocket launch.

And at this point, the two of them looked at Rex as the other medical doctor looked at them with eyes set to confusion and befuddlement.

"Update me." Prompted Martinez and Frank was the one who pulled him and presented Rex like a car in a stage in a car show. He frowned even more. "Now."

"Can't you see him?" Said Hank with frustration on his excited face.

"He's beautiful!" added Frank like a giggling girl.

"What the freaking way are you two talking about?"

"Doc!"

"Can't you see?"

""We got in front of us a martial arts genius!""

"..."

"..."

"..."

"I don't get it."

When Frank and Hank looked at each other, it was there that Graham entered the scene and cleared his throat, adjusting his collar.

The three doctors looked behind and saw him. The joyous mood dissipating like ripple in the sand sea.

"You're supposed to be done a few minutes ago, what happened here?"

The twins, again, looked at each other but it was Hank's turn to move first.

"It's Rex. We're in a breakthrough."

"Breakthrough?" Both Graham and Martinez looked at the twins puzzled.

"Yeah," answered Frank. "Rex, right now, is in the middle of the first stages of the Triple Bloom."

"That meditation thing?" Martinez raised a brow.

"Uhuh." Graham was sharply gazing at Hank. "It's the first after two hundred years. And to actually in a such a young age to achieve it is just... just too, well it's really awesome."

The silent Graham took a pause, then to Frank he put a silent check, then to the Doctor who turned to the sleeping Rex, and finally to the man himself.

"You're saying that in that state of his, he's turning into a martial arts master?"

Hank and Frank chuckled. Their unified tone and the one tempo made Graham frown and them pulling their lips in silence.

"No, he's not a master." Corrected Frank. Then he knelt down and tilted his head at Rex. "But if he gets to heal that leg, then yes, perhaps he will be."

"But it's not easy, you yourself know it. Although I should be honest, this graph is exciting."

Hank showed a panel at Graham, it was a panel of the already familiar data of his neural activities. But what he did was to expand two sides of this graph. While the other end was the one in the middle where his rage graph was high, the other part is at the very end of the graph, the one that's exactly like the mountain bordering to the emotion of love.

And when he saw this graph, a rare smile emerged at Graham's brutish complexion.

"Yin and Yang."

The twins couldn't help but smile at it too. The mention of the words was just too exciting to hear.

*************************

It was already 10 in the morning when Rex got to eat his brunch.

His head felt lighter now, the anger he had to almost boiling point had been lifted and his shoulders felt a little more cool, thanks to the massage he received from the dignified Frank.

Although, he was worried. The words "We will train you after you heal" he heard over and over from the twins was enough to cause him to worry.

There was also that dream. Or at least a part of it.

It was the part where he saw his mom in Terroa...

...facing a smiling Rogue.