The Butterfly Effect

Prologue: The Fool

The world is light. A blur of signs, pictures, streetlights, traffic lights, television and computer screens, reflected off of a myriad of surfaces all competing for the attention of the viewer. Candles, flashlights, cell phone screens, the silver moon hanging in the black void above…

The glowing blue wings of a single butterfly…

Flap.

The fat yellow moon washed the world green as the dark spaces danced and his mother squeezed his hand. Her other hand was clutching a slender metal tube so tightly that her knuckles stood out from the back of her hand like pale little mountains. Every street light and sign and storefront window was dark and dead, every car was frozen in place, most of them in the middle of the road when they weren't piled up in smashed stacks or wrapped around telephone poles, and the people…

"Keep your eyes on the road ahead of us, Minato. Can you see the bridge? We're almost out of here."

"But what about Daddy?" Her death-grip on his hand became even tighter as she pulled him closer to her body. "Mommy, you're hurting me!"

"I'm sorry, Minato," his mother whispered, her grip loosening as her dark blue bangs slid over her eyes. "I'm so sorry…"

Flap.

The green light of the yellow moon beat down on them as they ran from the sounds and the horrible inferno still flickering behind them, supporting a hysterical Naomi between the two of them as they ran.

"Let me go, Minato-ni-san!" the girl howled as she kicked him with her good leg. "Let me go! Mommy and Daddy are still back there! They're still-!" Her flailing foot found his kneecap and he dragged all three of them to the ground with a barely-stifled grunt of pain, drawing a fresh howl of agony from the seven-year-old as one of them landed on her sprained ankle. Her scream was echoed by the most unearthly keening howl coming from the sight of the explosion.

And then there was silence. Only the sound of their ragged gasping and the faint sound of crackling flames broke the unearthly quiet.

"Minato-ni-san… Mommy died when the car blew up. Didn't she."

"Probably, Naomi." It wasn't a question, so he didn't bother to lie.

"And it's quiet. Which means that Daddy's not fighting anymore. So he's probably dead too."

"Naomi-chan-"

"Shut up," she snarled, cutting the other boy off. "I'm not stupid! I know what happened!" She looked down at the ground, down at the ankle she'd sprained when the moon was white. Her long blue hair slid over her face, hiding her expression. "And I know you won't be able to escape from those things if you're carrying me too…"

Flap.

The angel held him close to her chest with her remaining arm as they crouched behind a pile of debris while the green light from the yellow moon stretched the shadows into something sinister.

"You're cold," he whispered as she set him down. With her arm freed, she pulled the big red ribbon from around her neck and started blotting at the cut on his head. "My mommy got cold, and she's not moving anymore. Why are you still moving?"

"Because I am not human," the angel replied as she wrapped the ribbon around his head with her hand. After a moment's fumbling, she grabbed the other end of the ribbon in her teeth and managed to knot it around his head in a messy, makeshift bandage. The jagged edges of her severed arm glinted in the firelight as she moved.

"I know. You're an angel, after all."

"Incorrect. For the last time, I am…" she looked down at him and let out an explosive sigh. "Never mind. What's important is that we stop that thing before it… hurts… anyone else. I don't-" her eyes suddenly went wide as she fixated on the patch of darkness that was slowly advancing on them and then down at him again. "No… I can't do that… it's too cruel…but do I have a choice…?"

"What are you talking about, Angel-san?"

"Minato-san, I…" her voice trailed off as she looked down at him, blonde hair framing her face. "I'm so sorry, but I need your help…"

Flap.

"No one can escape time. It delivers us all to the same end…" The boy's whisper was barely audible over the creaking of the hinges as he slowly started to bring both the halves of the coffin's lid back to the closed position-

With a garbled mix between a grunt and a yelp, the blue-haired teenage boy jerked awake with such force that he nearly fell out of his seat. Only the restraining hand of the child sitting next to him kept him from ending up in a heap on the floor. "Another nightmare, Minato?" the boy asked as he dragged a teenager literally twice his size back into an upright position with ease. "Y'know, maybe if you didn't keep falling asleep with your music on…" the boy's small hands started reaching up towards the headphones curled around his companion's ears, but the teen batted them away irritably.

"Hands off my headphones, Pharos," he grumbled, still trying to orient himself to his surroundings. "Wait, we're still on the train?"

"You ended up leaving later than you were planning because you just had to try and convince your old man one last time that you're cut out for this… and, you know, not chasing a death wish. And then the already-later train was delayed for some reason they never told us. So yeah, we're still on the train." The boy cocked his head to the side, curiosity lighting his unnaturally blue eyes. "Must have been some kind of nightmare if you can't even remember that much," he said in a voice that might have sounded sympathetic… unless, like Minato, one knew that the little boy in the striped pajamas never slept, let alone dreamed.

"Actually, I dreamed that you tried to kill me, if you're so damned curious," Minato murmured as he looked around the mostly empty car, trying to shake the image of the little boy closing him inside his own coffin, along with the creepy-ass glowing blue butterfly and the bits and fragments of bad memories that usually didn't surface in his nightmares. Coming here must have shaken them loose. Fantastic, I really needed another complication.

"Oh," Pharos said at last, finally breaking his silence. "Um, you know I wouldn't actually do that, right? I mean, who would I talk to then?"

"So, your fear of boredom is the only thing keeping me from uncertain doom?" the blue-haired boy asked in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"I'm serious," Pharos insisted, staring up at Minato's face intently.

"…I know," Minato replied with equal earnestness… which quickly smoothed into his usual apathetic expression as he noticed some of the occupants of the car were staring at him.

"What? What's wrong…. Oh. People. Right, we can have this conversation later. Sorry about that." Minato grunted and turned up his music, figuring that the noise wouldn't carry too far. Although, at this point there probably wasn't a reason to bother, since half a dozen people had just seen him have a heart-to-heart with a patch of thin air.

Ever since Minato had lost both his parents in the series of 'accidents' that had rocked Tatsumi Port Island that one awful night in '99, Pharos had been his constant companion. He literally could not get rid of the strange boy in the striped pajamas… and he'd certainly tried when he had noticed that he was the only one who could see him. If he'd been born into any other family, he'd probably have been committed to a psych ward a long time ago. Luckily, his family's… unique quirks… meant that the adults around him had believed him when he'd told them about the strange boy following him everywhere. Not that they'd been able to find out much more than the fact that Pharos was there, and the two of them couldn't be separated… but it was nice to be able to be honest with someone.

I'm going to miss that this year, he admitted to himself. Because he'd chosen to accept the invitation to Gekkoukan, he was going to be more or less alone. None of his 'cousins' would be joining him on this little expedition; nor would any of the various 'associates' of the family be along… and he was strictly forbidden to contact any of the family for any reason other than reporting whatever findings he might make unless he was in life-threatening danger or the world was ending. (And really, a scholarship? At the high school level? And offered at the end of his freshman year, rather than the beginning? Luckily for them he had 'an overabundance of curiosity and a lack of common sense', as his grandfather had said. Repeatedly) Aside from Pharos, he was going to be alone in Tatsumi Port Island… the place where several members of his family who had dared to look into the actions of the Kirijo Group had died.

With a sigh, Minato pulled out his cell phone and bit back a curse. Already less than ten minutes to midnight? Not good. Not good at all. If they were still on the train at midnight—

"Next stop is Tatsumi Port Island. We should get there in time," Pharos told him. Minato jerked, and stared at the boy, who, as far as he could tell, had been staring out the window for the last few minutes, not at his cell phone. Not that it would have been impossible for him to see the phone at that angle, but…

"Are you sure you can't read my mind?" Minato grumbled. Pharos beamed and didn't answer, as usual. Minato nobly suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the boy and decided to join him in staring out the window as the place where he would be spending the next year came into view.

Home sweet home, he thought to himself as he gazed at the myriad of lights across the water. Despite the fact that he'd lived there for most of his early childhood, nothing looked familiar. He supposed that shouldn't be surprising – he doubted that he'd ever been allowed to stay up this late when his parents were still alive; his father had been a very strict man – but he still felt a bit disappointed. Not that he'd really come here for fuzzy feelings of nostalgia for the 'good old days'. Bizarrely, he felt a strange longing for the family's main manor out in the country, for the peaceful quiet away from the hum of the modern world, even the suspicious glares he got from many of his fourth and fifth and ninth cousins because of-

Pharos elbowed him in the ribs, which earned the little brat a glare despite how strange it would look to others, seeing a teenager glaring at an empty spot of bench on a train. "That's a pretty nostalgic look you've got on your face. You should be a bit more careful."

Minato considered his imaginary friend's comment and nodded to Pharos, disguising it as bopping his head to the beat of the music as he turned up the volume on his MP3 player. The boy in the prison-striped pajamas was right, if annoying… you never knew who could be listening in.

Minato had a few moments to grab his bag and hustle off the train before the world turned green. Sadly, when it did his MP3 player went dead along with his cell phone, the station's clock, train, and the lights. Thankfully, the moon was nearly full and the huge skylight let in plenty of its light, providing useful augmentation to the natural green glow everything seemed to take on during the Zero Hour. (Or Nevertime, as he and Pharos had first called it before the adults had taken charge of the situation)

"You should quit gawking and get moving," Pharos suggested as he skipped around a puddle of blood. "You know they're more active around this time of month, and you're unarmed… and hence, more useless than usual."

"Gee, thanks Mom," Minato snarked, but the reminder got him moving through the forest of coffins nonetheless.

The Zero Hour, Nevertime, or whatever one happened to call it, occurred every night between 12:00:00, and 12:00:01. During this time of night, time (or, perhaps, the perception of time?) stopped for nearly every living creature. Except for Minato. And Pharos, although he didn't really count as a living creature. And certain other individuals that he wasn't going to think about while moving through a public area, even if all the people who had formerly been milling around seemed to be safely locked in coffin-like structures, the fate of everyone who did not experience the Zero Hour, where the sky turned green, the moon turned yellow, and water turned to blood.

Not that this hidden hour was without its dangers, and Minato carefully scanned every patch of darkness in case one of them turned up. His first encounter with one had been about a week and a half after his parents had died, and he would never forget the way the darkness under his bed in the orphanage had seemed different when he had walked back into his room from the bathroom… or the dark, barely-defined hand that had shot out to grab his skinny little ankle and drag him under.

The next few moments had been a horrifying whirl. Somehow the bed had been broken in half when the monster had split into three smaller blobs with blue masks, which had all immediately tried to tear him to pieces. And somewhere between grabbing a piece of said bed to defend himself, Pharos ripping one of them in half with his bare hands, and nearly every piece of furniture in the room being destroyed, all three blobs had been killed, and he'd only had nightmares about it for six months afterwards. Pharos (and the reports his mother had managed to sneak off the island to the family) had called them Shadows. Since then, he had encountered other Shadows. Sometimes he had been able to avoid them. Sometimes he'd been around some of the adults in his family that were active during the Zero Hour, and the Shadows had been dealt with. Sometimes, like now, he'd had the terrible luck to be out in an exposed place alone… and he'd handled the problem. He'd been given years of private tutelage with katana, bows, firearms (small handguns, and only with his grandfather, who honestly believed in being prepared for every situation and sometimes ignored small things like laws in favor of keeping people, especially grandchildren, alive), and just about any form of fighting he could pry out of his family members and the family's associates. He could take care of himself. But Shadows were damn hard to kill… and were more likely to appear on or around the full moon, according to personal experience and the information his family had gathered. "How long do you think it'll take to get to the dorm?" he asked Pharos as they left the station. "Thirty minutes?"

"Try to make it fifteen," Pharos suggested as his eyes scanned the area and his little shoulders tensed.

"You're kidding me… already? Where is it?" Minato groaned, and started to shrug his bag off his shoulder before Pharos stopped him.

"I don't think there's one in the area," Pharos informed him – and the kid had an uncanny knack for knowing that sort of thing – "But… I have a bad feeling. If I were you, I'd keep moving."

"So noted," Minato replied, shrugging his bag back into a more comfortable position as he palmed the page with the directions on it off to Pharos and started to run, silently appointing the other boy his navigator. For once, his constant companion didn't bother to sass him. Pharos had gotten 'bad feelings' before, and usually when he did, someone died. That person hadn't been him – yet – and that wasn't a trend that either of them was eager to break. So he ran.

His brisk evening jog got him to his new dorm in about forty-five minutes, maybe even fifty. It shouldn't have taken nearly so long, but they'd had to make a detour to avoid a Shadow wandering the city and had gotten themselves lost. Still, the Zero Hour was winding down, which meant that he could safely find his room and crash for a few hours before dragging himself to school in the morning. It was a surprisingly nice building; brick with large windows, windowed wooden doors, and even a neatly manicured lawn and bushes. And… were those lights coming from the common room? Electric ones? How in the name of the Yatagarasu was that—

He blinked, and the usual gloom of the Zero Hour returned. "Great, now I'm seeing things," he muttered, shaking his head to clear it. "Not that that's any different than usual." He turned to Pharos for the usual witty rejoinder…and found the little brat to be nowhere in sight. "Pharos?" he called out to the night as loudly as he dared, but he wasn't worried. Pharos could have easily gone inside. Or the boy could still be there by his side, just intangible and invisible. People, even Minato, only saw the eerie little boy when Pharos wanted them to, and sometimes Pharos just made himself scarce for the hell of it. In the middle of the Zero Hour, on his first day in a new city in a situation that was probably a trap was a pretty poor time for a practical joke in Minato's opinion. "Are you mad about what I said earlier? Because you really suck at reading maps. I won't give you one next time. Promise." Nothing. Hmm… "I will play classical music on loop every night for the next week if you don't show yourself now," he threatened, but the boy still didn't appear. Which was… mildly worrying.

Shrugging off the strangeness with the ease of long practice, Minato re-adjusted the strap on his bag for the eleventy-seventh time and started heading for the door. Pharos would get bored of whatever game he was playing this time and reappear eventually, so it wasn't anything to worry about. He was wondering whether he should wait until the Zero Hour ended and try to find whoever was in charge of the dorm or if he should just crash on the couch when he crossed the threshold.

And holy hell, the lights really were on inside. That shouldn't be happening during the Zero Hour.

Pharos probably shouldn't be sitting behind the front desk like he owned the place, either.

"You're late. I've been waiting for you," the younger boy accused, glaring at him slightly.

"Sorry, not all of us have the benefit of being able to become intangible at will," Minato quipped, but Pharos's expression remained eerily neutral.

And then, with no explanation, the boy was standing right in front of him.

"If you want to proceed, please sign here," Pharos said in lieu of a logical reply, gesturing to a red folder and an old-fashioned looking feather quill that had definitely not been on the desk three seconds ago.

"Not until you drop the mind games and tell me what the hell is going on," Minato growled, but found himself walking over to the desk to examine the thing anyway.

"You don't need to worry. It just says that you'll take responsibility for your actions… you know, the usual stuff," Pharos said in that same creepy tone with that same oddly vague expression.

"I can't read this," Minato complained, looking down at the page before him. The text was there, and some niggling voice in the back of his head said that he should be able to read it, but somehow the symbols marching across the page were about as meaningful to him as hieroglyphics.

"You're not ready to read it yet," Pharos informed him, causing Minato's eyes to narrow.

"Do you really think, with my family's specialties, that I'm stupid enough to sign a contract without being able to read it first?" He looked around, at the lights that shouldn't be on, at the contract he couldn't read, and at his suddenly strangely distant companion. "Am I even awake right now? Because if you're trying to put one over on me, you're going to have to try harder than this, Pharos."

Something that more closely resembled Pharos's normal expressions crossed the boy's face before vanishing again just as quickly. "You have to sign the contract if you want to proceed."

"…and what happens if I don't?" Minato asked, feeling his temper starting to fray.

"The end," the boy said simply. "I don't know of what," he clarified when Minato glared at him. "I just know that it will end."

"…you know," Minato said slowly, incredulously, as he tried to wrap his brain around what was going on, "if you really are a demon – and if you are, you should have told me years ago, it would have simplified things – then you know exactly how badly entering into a contract with you will screw me. So, no. I value my life. I value my afterlife."

"Please sign it, Minato."

It wasn't quite begging. Pharos never begged, and rarely made requests. The fact that he was making one now…I haven't seen him this weird since Aunt and Uncle were—

Years and years of training in governing his thoughts made him shy away from that memory, but the ominous foreboding remained. Along with the fact that Pharos had never hurt him outside of sparring and the occasional mostly harmless prank, and had actually saved his life several times when he didn't have to.

"Only because you asked so nicely," Minato replied sarcastically as he snatched up the quill and quickly set down the kanji for his name. Both of them. Stupid as it was, it felt fitting.

Pharos picked up the contract the moment the quill left the paper, held it up vertically and made it disappear, all the while wearing the creepiest grin Minato had ever seen gracing his face.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on now?" Minato asked, successfully keeping the quaver out of his voice. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Pharos's reply did nothing to reassure him. It didn't even make sense. "No one can escape from Time. It delivers us all to the same end." The sentence froze him stiff, bringing the memory of his nightmare rushing to the forefront of his thoughts. So he stood, unresisting and expressionless as Pharos reached up and took off his headphones, leaving them to dangle around his neck. "You can't plug your ears and cover your eyes." Pharos took a few steps backwards, the lights dying and plunging him into shadow, leaving only his eerily glowing blue eyes and a single outstretched hand visible to Minato as his eyes struggled to adjust to being violently plunged back into the Zero Hour's green gloom. "And so it begins…"

Pharos was 'gone' again, leaving Minato reeling to regain his senses. "Fuck, Pharos, you win," he whispered raggedly as he shook his head to clear it. Trying to convince himself that this had just been one of Pharos's twisted practical jokes or a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation, rather than the beginning of something… something monumental. Despite the fact that Pharos had done several things Minato hadn't had a hint the damned specter was capable of. Should have listened to Grandfather, never should have trusted him –

"Who's there?" demanded a female voice, jarring Minato out of his confusion and back into the real world. Standing in the threshold of the common room was a girl about his age dressed in a pink sweater pulled over a white-collared shirt with a red bow (probably the school uniform, although damn, that was a short skirt), looking about as confused as he felt. And terrified, couldn't forget terrified. Her shoulders twitched towards something strapped to her thigh.

Gun, Minato realized, holding himself completely still as he watched the stranger stare at him, panting and shaking. Shit, already? He asked himself disbelieving. First, Pharos goes even weirder than usual, and now the Kirijo Group's already sending assassins? Crappy assassins, judging by the deer-in-headlights look of the girl standing across from him coupled with the way her hand was hovering just shy of the gun, shaking worse than he'd seen in a while. If she's ever used that thing before, I'll eat my MP3 player. I could almost be insulted… or paranoid. Probably paranoid, I know the Kirijo Group can do better than this. Not that he could think of another reason there would be a high school girl running around in the Zero Hour. With a gun. But a gun that she was clearly hesitant to use. Maybe he could talk her down?

"Um, I think there might have been some sort of mi-" The girl panicked when he spoke, ripping her gun from its holster as he dove behind one of the couches for some sort of cover.

"Takeba, wait!" called out a different woman. "He's supposed to be here, Takeba. You can put it away," the stranger continued in a soothing voice that made Minato think it might be okay to leave cover. He straightened to find Pink(Takeba, probably) lowering her gun with an embarrassed expression on her face, while another young woman in a white button up shirt with a red ribbon (he suddenly remembered that that was Gekkoukan's official girl's uniform) and a longer skirt (sadly). She had a red armband around her left arm marking her as the member of some club or other, and gun of her very own at her waist. Looking at her face—

She had a familiar face, one that he had memorized from photographs and news articles. Wavy auburn hair, dark eyes and a serious expression… he'd just come face to face with Mitsuru Kirijo, heiress of the Kirijo Group. Maybe I'm going to have to fight after all, he thought to himself as he dropped into a ready stance. But before anyone could say anything else, the light and his music and the world at large came rushing back as the Zero Hour ended, taking a lot of the tension in the room with it as it went

"My apologies to you, Arisato-san," Kirijo told him, inclining her head. "There have been a few break-ins and incidents of vandalism in this neighborhood in the last several weeks, and we were not expecting you so late." Her expression turned mildly disapproving. "You should remember, for the future, that all Gekkoukan dorms have a nine o'clock curfew during the school week and that it is strictly enforced."

"Is that really a reason to point a gun at me?" he wondered, knowing he was pushing his luck. But, then again, hadn't he come back to Tatsumi Port Island to do exactly that?

Takeba looked embarrassed all over again, but Mitsuru just smiled faintly. "It's not a real gun, of course. Rather, it's a modified stun gun made for self defense."

"By the Kirijo Group?" Minato guessed.

"I see my family's reputation precedes me," Mitsuru sighed, but she didn't seem upset. "For those of you who don't know each other, however… Takeba, this is Minato Arisato a junior who just transferred to our school. He'll be rooming here for a few days until the Residential Office gets the paperwork sorted out."

"I wasn't made aware that there was an error," Minato interjected mildly. "Or is this actually a girl's dorm? I know my hair's a bit long but seriously," he groaned, tugging at his bangs for good measure, getting laughs out of both Takeba and the Kirijo heiress.

"No need to worry, Arisato-san, this is a co-ed dorm…. the only one on campus, as a matter of fact. The circumstances surrounding this place are a bit… special. I'll explain later." By which you mean either 'never' or 'not until I can trust you', Minato filled in with a sigh, surprised he'd gotten as much information as he had, and by the fact that Kirijo didn't seem the least bit wary. Which was bizarre. The Kirijo Group obviously knew who he was, or he wouldn't have been invited to attend this school in the manner that he had. Had someone neglected to pass that bit of information on to the littlest Kirijo? And if so, why? "Anyway… Arisato-san, this is Yukari Takeba, also a junior and a resident of this dorm."

"Pleased to meet you, Takeba-san," he said neutrally, deciding to let the whole bit where she'd pulled a gun on him slide (he didn't believe Mitsuru's 'stun gun' explanation for a minute). After all, if I'd had one, I probably would have pulled it on her, too.

"Likewise," the girl replied, bowing slightly. It was clear from her stance and expression that she was grateful that he was deciding to forgive her earlier hastiness.

"It's getting late, so we should probably all retire. Your temporary room is on the second floor, at the end of the hall. Everything you sent ahead is already there."

"Thank you very much," Minato replied, opting for politeness as he went back to gather up his dropped bag. Luckily, nothing had fallen out.

"I could show you the way, if you'd like," Takeba offered, the first time she'd spoken without a prompt since the Zero Hour had ended.

"Sure, thanks," he agreed. It would, after all, give him a chance to talk to her alone, and maybe get some information that Kirijo was too collected to let slip.

"Well then, I bid you both a good night," Mitsuru told them, excusing herself as she vanished back up the stairs.

"So…" Minato started, turning to Takeba. "Is it just you and Kirijo-senpai here, Takeba-san?"

"Um, no," Yukari replied as they started climbing the stairs "There's also Akihiko-senpai, another senior like Mitsuru-senpai. I think someone else from their class used to live here too, but he moved out before I even knew this place existed."

"Really?" Minato asked. "This seems like an awful lot of space for three people." Although I'm a bit surprised that Kirijo lives on campus at all. Her family owns this entire island, she could live anywhere during the school year. So why here?

"W-well yeah, you're right," Takeba stuttered, clearly nervous again. Damn. "I mean, Mitsuru-senpai's the heiress of the Kirijo Group… although you clearly already knew that. She can't just live packed in with everyone else." And you are clearly lying. Not that I've got any room to blame you. Although, judging by her reactions, there clearly was a reason the dorm was so empty. Interesting.

"I see," he replied, deciding to let the subject drop. It was late, and he was tired from a week straight of 'emergency training', some of the worst fights he'd ever had with his grandfather, and Pharos's latest batch of weirdness. And Takeba was clearly still on a hair-trigger… and still had that gun. He could always talk to her some time when she was more relaxed, or unarmed, or both. Like at school.

Quickly enough, they'd stopped at the last door at the end of the second floor hallway. "Here we are," Takeba pointlessly informed him, clearly still nervous around him. "Easy enough to remember, right? Since it's right at the end of the hall and everything…" Clearly, even she knew she was babbling as she cast around for something meaningful to say. "Oh! Make sure you don't lose your key, or you'll never hear the end of it," she told him as she handed it to him. "They're pretty strict when it comes to this dorm's security."

I'd imagine so, with Kirijo living here. And yet, they let me in anyway. Paperwork error or no paperwork error, that was stupid. I could be here to kill her, especially with the bad blood between our families. Not that he was. Petty revenge on uninvolved parties just wasn't his style.

Now if his path was to cross with that of Kirijo Senior, on the other hand…

Of course, it wouldn't be appropriate or intelligent to say that to someone probably conspiring with Mitsuru on something, so he simply settled for saying, "Thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to keep track of it. Is there anything else I should know while I stay here?"

"Um… nothing I can think of off the top of my head. I know it's a bit fancy, and Mitsuru-senpai is a bit strict about making sure we get our homework done, but other than that it's not that different from living in any other dorm." She paused, staring at him intensely enough to make him a bit uncomfortable. "Say…on your way here from the station, was everything okay?"

What? Is this an idle question, or is she trying to figure out if I'm aware of the Zero Hour? "What do you mean?"

Takeba stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "What? You know full well what I—you know what? Never mind." She wasn't nervous again, but the look she gave him was clearly tinged with suspicion. "I better get go—"

"Were you talking about Nevertime, Takeba-san?" Minato asked, deciding, recklessly, to take a risk since she was suspicious of him anyway.

"What?" she almost yelped.

"Nevertime. Or whatever you call it, anyway. When the sky turns green, the moon turns yellow, and the water becomes like blood," Minato clarified. "The time we just met in. You and Kirijo-senpai are the first people I've met who are aware of it." Outside my own family, anyway, he added inside his head, and wasn't that interesting? They'd always suspected the Kirijo Group had at least some people who were active during the Zero Hour, and now he'd just confirmed it.

"…It's late. I think we should be getting to bed," Yukari suggested, her expression now completely unreadable. Minato simply nodded at her and let her go. He certainly didn't expect her to trust him immediately, but he didn't think he'd scared her off, either…

"Arisato-kun?" Yukari asked, and her turned away from the door to face her. She'd barely moved more than two steps. "How long have you been aware of it?"

"What, Nevertime? Since I was a kid. You?"

"…only the last month or so," she admitted. "I'm lucky Kirijo-senpai found me, I'd thought I'd lost my mind. Sometimes I still think I've lost my mind."

"Well, if you've gone mad, Takeba-san, at least it's with good company," Minato sighed before realizing that that probably hadn't been the most sensitive thing to say… at least, judging by the mildly annoyed expression on Takeba's face… an expression which quickly melted away into something like… sympathy?

"…Yukari."

"Huh?" he asked.

"Anyone caught up in this mess has the right to use my first name, Arisato-kun," she informed him with a smile.

"Then allow me to extend you the same courtesy… Yukari-san," he replied, honestly pleased. He hadn't expected to have any contacts in this city for at least a week, and here was a person close to Mitsuru who was already becoming friendly with him. That would definitely be useful in the weeks to come.

Also, she was hot and seemed to enjoy pushing the limits of what she could get away with in a school uniform. Score.

The smile she gave him was definitely encouraging. "We really should get to bed. I have no idea what Kirijo-senpai would do to us if she caught us chatting into all hours of the night, and I don't want to find out."

"Not to mention we have class tomorrow," Minato groaned good-naturedly. "Yeah, you're right. Goodnight, Yukari-san."

"Goodnight… Minato-kun."

The moment he closed the door to his new room, he noticed some things that were odd. First of all, his things had all been unpacked and neatly arranged. Not that he'd expected the Kirijo grunts to pass up the chance to paw through his possessions (hence the fact that he'd brought nothing to defend himself), but the unpacking seemed to imply that someone seemed to think that he'd be here for a while, paperwork errors or no paperwork errors.

Secondly, the little traitor Pharos was sitting cross-legged on his bed like nothing had happened.

"Your room's pretty interesting for someone who's supposed to be here for less than a week. I guess either Mitsuru's messing with your head, or the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth," Pharos suggested with a smile, echoing Minato's thoughts. "Why'd you call it Nevertime, anyway? We haven't called it that for years. Although, I suppose you wouldn't want to use the term 'Zero Hour', around Kirijo grunts… not until we know what they know, anyway. Aren't mind games fun?" Minato considered ignoring him as payback for his earlier antics… but, then again, he needed to ask Pharos what the hell was up with that contract he'd been bullied into signing and the creepy, semi-prophetic babble, so he swallowed his resentment and hummed the first line of 'The Itsy-Bitsy Spider' under his breath, a signal they'd come up with when they were kids. "Oh yeah, I noticed. There's at least three hidden cameras in here in addition to microphones to pick up sound. Some other equipment that looks like it could be used for monitoring, too, although I'm not sure what it's looking for. That's really more your or Naomi's specialty, and given she's not here and they'll see it if you start poking your nose into stuff…" Minato hummed the second line of the children's song. "Um… get rid of them? I could smash them yeah, but I think they'd probably notice that… I think we're stuck with this for a while. At least we still have the Zero Hour. And I can still talk to you, of course, but it's much more fun when you can talk back."

Well, wasn't that great… he'd been expecting some sort of surveillance, but this appeared to be the worst case scenario. There was zero chance that his conversation with Yukari had gone unobserved if they'd put this much hardware into the bedrooms, and he was glad he'd been as vague as he had been when talking to her. On the tiny, tiny chance the Kirijo group thought Minato Arisato was his only name, he had no interest in giving them any free hints. He might even be able to play himself off as one of the Uninitiated, if he was lucky.

"Oh, by the way… did you know that your new girlfriend was pointing that gun at herself when she drew it?"

Minato froze in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt, and only years of training himself to ignore Pharos when the little bastard dropped a bombshell in a public place (or started telling jokes in the middle of tests) forced his hands back into motion. What. The. Hell. Okay, maybe Kirijo hadn't been lying when she had said she and Yukari weren't carrying guns. Unless Yukari was completely batshit insane or suicidal, and he hadn't gotten that vibe off of left the question of exactly what the hell they did do. Did they administer some sort of drug, like an adrenaline shot or something? Probably not, but… dammit, I really, really need to be able to talk to Pharos. Preferably somewhere where he wasn't on about two dozen cameras… which on this island probably meant either finding a park, the local shrine, or waiting for the Zero Hour to roll around again and kill the surveillance equipment. Actually, a shrine might not be such a bad idea. People think you're praying, not insane, if you talk to yourself at a shrine. Most of the time. As long as you're relatively quiet, anyway. I could even go visit Mom and Dad…

That pleasant thought brought the exhaustion roaring back in again. His aunt and uncle's remains had been recovered and interred on the family's land out in the countryside, so he'd been able to visit their graves. His parents, however, had been laid to rest here, in accordance to his father's will. It had been six years since the last time he'd even been allowed to visit Tatsumi Port Island, however, and he didn't think his aunt and uncle had had time to take him to see the graves before… well. Which would make the last time he'd paid his respects to his parents the time that they'd been put in the ground.

He was so tired, and not just because he'd only gotten about ten or twelve hours of sleep in the last seventy-two, including his catnap on the train. The weight of what he was trying to accomplish crushed down on his shoulders, dragging him into an uneasy sleep. For the first time since he had decided to return to Tatsumi Port Island, he did not dream.

Well, that ends the prologue! I feel like I should have something epically awesome to say here... but it's almost 5 am where I live. My brain's starting to quit on me. Also, if you notice similiarities to Farily English Story... yeah, I read it. If you haven't, you should too because it is awesome. It was so awesome, in fact, that I put off writing this for months because I was afraid I'd start mimicing it subconsciously. Now, I just wanted to write this too badly to care. So... if you see anything in this story that crosses the line between inspiration and plagarism, let me know! Actually, I'd love to hear all your lovely opinions... so please review! :)