The sun lanced off the chrome curve and struck the back of Akabane's retina. It was the first thing he saw that morning. No amount of irritated blinking would dislodge that slash of red branded behind his eyes, one which offered a plethora of violent ideas. He stifled a yawn, jaw cracking in the process. His eyes focused. Inches before his nose stirred the frayed ends of ash blonde hair, swaying to the push and pull of his breath. Peeping between the strands near the base of a creamy slope, Kagami's earring shone like a spaceship crashed in a wheat field, madly sending emergency signals to the cosmos floating above the jagged black spires of the City. Akabane secretly hated that thing. Slowly, deliberately, he reached his hand toward the sleeping Babylonian's jugular, on which sat the abomination of a fashion statement. He flicked the ornament. It slid over the curve that joined Kagami's neck and shoulder, jerking the earlobe to which its chain attached.

With a sigh, Kagami shifted his weight. Dawn drew out the grey shadows between his lean, rippling muscles, and reflected off the smooth white scars from past battles. Akabane had to hand it to Babylon City's latest biotechnology. Kagami produced very little keloid. Akabane remembered that long back wound that once poured blood over his gloved hand. After healing, it taunted him in the form of a two inch-long line that barely caught the light, while Akabane's old scars striped his body. Soon it would vanish completely.

Akabane waited, but Kagami didn't wake up.

Through the shrubs, bubblegum pink appeared in the cracks between pruned green leaves. A little girl in a billowing dress ran through the park, watched over by a mother intent on instilling early-rising habits. Her turquoise eyes spanned wide towards a butterfly, and little legs brought them closer. Tiny lips moved excitedly, but no sound rivaled the tranquil rhythm of Kagami's breathing. To Akabane's convenience, the glass walls had remained intact through the night, shielding Kagami and his exiled fuck buddy from politically sensitive eyes. Prior to this morning, Akabane had not seen their endurance so tested. Kagami... would not normally fall asleep after coupling, and without him escorting Akabane unseen, Akabane could not leave Babylon City peacefully.

"Kagami-kun..." He squeezed the illusionist's shoulder.

"Hnnnuh, it's too early."

Akabane swallowed a playful quip he meant to deliver at Kagami for falling asleep. "Not for me. I will need to depart soon."

"Apparently." Kagami threw his arms over his head as though rubber lined their post-coital perimeter, not fragile glass. He stretched his elegant body in a haphazard fashion, dappling every inch of exposed skin with leaf-shaped shadows. "How rude of me. But surely, you should have waken me up before the sun had risen...?"

"That would have been quite rude of me," Akabane replied, intently watching Kagami and the Kagami beyond him, that double image cast in the reflective glass, limbs woven in the shed clothes and crushed ferns, intense greens snarling over long legs, defusing their shape. "Instead, I lay awake contemplating the reason why this has happened. Why you granted yourself the luxury people like us attribute only to the ordinary people and their ordinary lovers... to fall asleep. They do not couple with their mortal enemies, as you have just done."

Kagami answered as though doing so were a chore. "Because... if anything happened to me, the mirrors would break, and people would see you up here." He rubbed his eyes with the desire to go straight back to sleep, in a way that made Akabane want to cut him.

"That is the most obvious reason. However, this was not the first time you escorted me up here for carnal pleasure, Kagami-kun. From what I understand, you were attracted to such practices because of the risk involved. Our first time happened after a battle. You cried then. I thought I would never see you again after that." Akabane smirked at Kagami's tense glare. "Nevertheless, I saw you again. If you had chosen to avoid me, you would have. We fought again and the same thing happened. Our fights evolved into games taking place high over the city. No matter how badly I cut you, you would return, like addicted to the pain. And then a few months ago, the game changed. You would lure me with the pretense of fighting, only to drop your weapons and undress me in the unlikeliest of locations... a church, a movie theatre, a stranger's jacuzzi, a pet shop, a mannequin factory, the vehicle of Midou Ban and Amano Ginji as it was towed, and finally to Babylon City, where your mirrors have kept all the world ignorant of your strange perversion. You took a break from all of this when Lady Poison's seventeenth birthday arrived and you left to help her, only to return to your old habits after you've accomplished your mission. How very interesting, Kagami-kun. Very interesting indeed."

Kagami examined the roots of the closest shrub. "What are you trying to say?"

Akabane pressed on. "Have you become bored, Kagami-kun? Sometimes I wonder, for my own convenience, how long it will take before you deliberately drop the mirrors just to raise a commotion in a heavily-populated area... such as this park on the very day Babylon City celebrates its anniversary. Sometimes I wonder, for my own pride, whether you actually expect me to tear down the mirrors one of these days, for I am not one who wishes to disappoint. And sometimes I wonder, for my own amusement, whether you even care if you get caught sleeping with the forbidden fruit in this carefully constructed Garden of Eden. Are you less concerned with who you're with than where you are and what happens afterwards? Tell me, Kagami-kun, what it is that you want."

Slim eyes watched Akabane without blinking. "I can't believe this. Of all people... I did not imagine ever waking up next to you and being bombarded with such questions." Kagami shook his head, and his eyes darted to the right. "From women, maybe, asking me what I want and telling me what they want when I have no interest in any of that. But not you. Why over-analyze such things that have little importance?"

With a single motion, Akabane produced scalpels poised at Kagami's throat. "You dare speak condescendingly," he said in a cool voice. "It's very like you to hover about the truth without actually engaging in it." The tip of a blade dipped beneath taut skin, and a crimson bead broke from a crisp line. It was the first time Akabane cut Kagami in months, but it drew no flinch from its victim. Within a few breaths, Akabane eased the pressure. "How accusing of me. Perhaps you're just in denial. How about I give you what you won't admit to wanting? Go on, Kagami-kun. Break the mirrors. Break the mirrors or I'll do it for you." Akabane gazed down at the prone man, his pale hair tousled chaotically among the twigs and leaves, smudges of dirt smeared across his cheek from their aggressive love-making in the night. In contrast to their earliest battles, however, Kagami's cool eyes did not contain the expression of a cornered beast resisting capture. He was completely unreadable, although a recent memory materialized in Akabane's mind. The night they coupled in a pet store, Kagami, in the throes of passion, accidentally kicked a cage door open. When they were done, Akabane turned to notice that a kitten poised, half outside the cage, half inside, undecided where it belonged. Its behaviour shamefully undermined the sharp, feral look in its eyes: a wild spirit tainted by domestication. Never had Akabane expected to recollect that memory in relation to Kagami.

When Kagami finally smirked, Akabane knew there was no retracting his threat. The illusionist always had a subtle manner about him, though not in the cowardly manner of avoiding direct confrontation. He loved to taunt, lace his clues with butter, and watch his victims slip all over his red herrings. The man was too artful to remain interested in direct honesty.

Akabane reached the end of his patience. With a flick of his wrist, Akabane send the scalpels into the nearest mirror and the sounds of the park-- noises of celebration bleeding into startled gasps and screams-- rushed into his ears amongst the chiming glass.


To fall through a subway grate... what were the odds? It was almost, as Kagenuma would have boasted, Fate.

As the flimsy grid gave out, Kagami kicked it away with a resounding clang he barely heard. He watched the darkness swallow him like a whale. All the world's music had changed. The busy intersection floated away and a new overture rushed over his head in the form of roaring metal. A rail slammed midway between his toes and heels and his arms swung out for balance, the darkness thinning between his outstretched fingers. Rats scurried for cover, their shadows flickering like flames over pebbles and trash as light peeled through the black. In a panic, Kagami leaped off the rail and hung from the roof of the tunnel. Warmth spread over his cheekbones when he saw an upside-down train passing along the tracks in the opposite side. His heart felt ready to drop out his slack-jawed mouth.

Waiting for him on the tracks was his quarry of the chase: Akabane. He had even caught the grate and shut it on the way down. Distant sunlight filtered upon him in the form of perfect squares. "Are you chasing? Being chased? Leading me astray? Forgive me, Kagami-kun, for I cannot decide," he said, readjusting his wide-brimmed hat with the tips of his gloved fingers. "I break the glass windows and run from the City. In the interest of your reputation, you hastily dress and pursue me for a glorious battle for all to see. And yet I escape despite the odds stacked against me, and we end up alone once again, deep in the bowels of the city's underworld. Why... Kagami-kun?" Scalpel tips emerged between his fingers, but Kagami took the initiative. Glass shards splintered over concrete, and it was Akabane who dodged.

"Are you not interested in an even match?" Kagami dropped from the ceiling in the anticipation of a counter-attack, the tails of his jacket billowing in the draft. Before his eyes, the black blur of his enemy solidified into a silhouette. Chrome lines spread toward him. Kagami crouched, watching sparks fly from the closest beam. "This is far more satisfying, don't you think?" He watched the slim shape before him, waiting, taunting in his smug expression, in hopes that sooner or later, his rival would concede to the brandishing of Bloody Sword. Instead, Akabane continued to speak.

"How exquisitely baffling. To fight with each other like this, it made us both feel alive, charged. But time and repetition turned it into a mere game. And from that mere game, a ritual was born. You had lured me into the Castle where your people could watch us clash from above. They televised us for all your neighbours to see as an example to all of them... so that they will not become exiled one day, like me, or risk punishment and public ridicule in the event of defeat." Through the slit in the hat, Akabane's eye offered Kagami an expression that he was more used to giving than receiving. To have it mirrored back at him... it made his hair rise in a way that was not necessarily unpleasant. While his mouth formed the questions, his gaze contained the knowledge behind the answer. Would it be mirrored on Kagami's lips? Would he admit? That was the challenge. "You liked to be seen, Kagami-kun. But you stopped fighting me for months. And finally today, when forced into it, you did not cut a single slit in my coat through all of Babylon City and the levels below. And now we fight where no eyes land."

"Why are you so confused? You forget that I operate on my own terms. Loyalty, obedience, those are all false surfaces of a Babylonian. Surely, coming from up there yourself, you would know that." Kagami thought he caught a subtle change in Akabane's face, but a mere shadow had passed over the grate above.

"So it is not your agenda with the City that has changed. It has gone beyond that."

Pale lips drew even. Kagami's silence told them both what they needed to know. Having grown up in Babylon City, the two rivals shared the same knowledge that sucked the mystery out of playful banter. Akabane had entered familiar territory that was explored by everything on a daily basis-- their thoughts, their dreams, their emotions-- everything but their words. Forbidden words shot meaning into the vulnerable airspaces, made otherwise pristine and predictable by the stern culture that surrounded them. In withholding his roundabout answers, Kagami had granted Akabane his unspoken consent to continue... to pry and invade him in a way he'd never done before, and perhaps to leave pain, like always, before exiting.

"You have become bored with watching." Akabane raised the lip of his hat to stare at Kagami evenly. "There is nothing within the walls of the Infinite Castle that interest people like us. The odd individuals from the outside world sometimes pass through the lower level, and sometimes you condescend to meet them... but every other day of the year, the most interesting things you look forward to are what the most ridiculous trends among your proud, unchallenged people. I gather from watching the City's children that turquoise is the new purple, this decade..."

Kagami's brows knit. Akabane didn't stop.

"Even your wars are ritualized and fake. You create tragic virtual entities and draw in outside aliens using their emotions. You transform their struggles into entertainment and laugh at how big and romantic they feel risking everything for some petty invented cause." Akabane smiled wryly. "But how long until individuals like yourself become bored with watching the same channel, over and over again? How did it make you feel when Lower Town separated and you felt neither disappointment nor elation? Is apathy that beautiful of an emotion, worth preserving by denying yourselves the lives you really want to experience?"

The turn of conversation, and its stubborn resistence to being turned back, told Kagami he wasn't getting Bloody Sword that day.

Akabane's scalpels lowered. "You want out. I will not give you escape from Babylon City, Kagami-kun. Seize it yourself. Is that what you've been conditioned to doing all this time? Living in a world of created realities? Where your neighbours can solve your problems by altering their environment. And by self-delusion. I believe there's a term for that. 'Cop-out.' A cop-out from Life itself. A cop-out from the truth. There is no reflection without light, Kagami-kun. Within that concrete sanctuary of cables and wires, you are useless... to yourself, to your own happiness."

Kagami had not moved nor spoken. Not a motion creased his clothes, even as Akabane began to stalk towards him, lips moving around a wry smile. "But you have dabbled in neither virtual reality nor the occult. Instead, you go where Babylonians refuse to tread: down, sometimes outside, but you're always back in time to watch the next fake war. You aren't satisfied and you seek more. The other citizens call themselves elite because they place so much value on what separates themselves from other people, trapping themselves with their own strict rules to preserve this mythic differentiation. Time, evolution, moves on, leaving them behind. There are many Babylon Cities in this world. They do not last. You have grown up among insecure, pathetic people, Kagami-kun. But I can see you resisting those bonds now, as I have, years ago. Why biologically engineer creatures of substance, only to seal them away from the world in which they may thrive?"

Akabane smiled. His words had punctured a hymen and the truth bled all over Kagami's spotless life. "You want a challenge? You've been living in the wrong place all these years." Around the corner, several tons of steel and its living cargo rattled along the rails. Kagami never watched subway trains very much in his life, but he never forgot the drab expressions through the oil-streaked windows: blank faces bored of existing... stiff figures afraid of touching their neighbours... sleep-deprived eyes lowered into shiny magazines, where a more interesting life existed below neat little captions. If it weren't for the people's mundane appearances, they would have looked strikingly familiar. The thundering bulk ate up the track. As the curved rail flung the train straight toward them, a mechanical blare of warning mowed their voices into nothing. But Kagami read Akabane's lips as they were.

Leave them.


The crash was loud. It was rather uncharacteristic of Lady Poison to be throwing things.

"I swear, that's why I'm here," Kagami said imploringly, while Mr. No-Brake leaned out his window to examine the damage to the side of his truck. Fortunately, it was just an empty bottle.

"No. No. Doctor Jackal, he is not joining us."

"But it amuses me so, Lady Poison. Despite his talents, Kagami-kun has not needed to work a day in his life. I cannot wait to see him performing a real job with true professionals."

Lady Poison glared at Doctor Jackal. Doctor Jackal smiled at Lady Poison. Their new recruit looked between the two. If tension had a colour, it would have been violet.

Mr. No-Brake cleared his throat. "So," said the steadfast trucker to the three standing by the road. "What will be the code name for this poor schmuck?"