But that was years ago. Six, to be exact. Twice the age I was then is the age I am now. A lifetime since, maybe.

And in that lifetime, I'd slowly but surely settled into things, and once I settled I think I stayed settled. Yasaka was not the only person I had to get used to: she had a daughter, not too much younger than me, named Kunou. In addition there was a roommate - or perhaps several of them, I can't be certain. These roommates would come and go in unpredictable patterns, staying a couple days before leaving for a couple weeks. One in particular I like to think I made a connection with. Somehow I never managed to catch his actual name but he'd always make jokes about what it was, comparing himself to Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars films, or something about a homemade knife. He called me "apprentice" a lot, and I called him whatever nickname Yasaka gave him, which tended to vary. Although I also had my own nickname for him if I couldn't hear what she'd address him by.

(Sheev, shiv, _ _ _ _ _)

I attended school. I knew quickly that I'd grow to hate it, and wasn't proven wrong by any means. Math wasn't too hard when it was simple but there got to be so many rules! Same story with any other subject. I barely passed anything and it took everything I could to maintain even that, and later I learned why, but we'll get to that later. The teachers there didn't seem bad, just a bit distant and didn't seem to care. The other kids were all chatty and some internal intuition told me none of them cared about one another, despite their obvious desires to make friends if only for the sake of promoting their own social standing. A couple that were sincere were actually mostly jerks, but they were honest jerks and that much was a comfort of sorts. Always preferable company to the giggly sociopaths that made up the majority of the student body. And like me they detested school, which made them easier to understand. Even the smart ones I met, and they obviously had a better sense of their own direction than any a teacher or class could ever give them.

Home life got... tricky, very quickly. Yasaka was understanding enough and didn't seem to worry too much about my school situation, and Kunou was fine, if an annoying little sister could ever be called such. As for "Sensei" as I nicknamed my favorite of Yasaka's roommates, he also seemed to understand, although neither one did anything to help. They weren't the problem. I was.

Not even real problems. Sure, I witnessed my parents die in front of me and my best friend - real or not - was taken from me, but that's life. So what if I happen to relive it every night in a more distorted, more vividly painful way? So what if I happen to be living with someone who I'd never met before the day I was dropped at her doorstep? My closest friend during the best years of my life may not be real? No problem! Not to worry, you can't stop wondering if anything that's happened since is real either but that's okay! Can't trust anyone, even the ones you're pretty sure you love as family? Worry not, that's perfectly normal! Incapable of understanding why an event in the past is having such a profound effect on an otherwise empty present? Life's a progression of past to present to future, get over it!

And it seemed to never stop. Nothing happened except a repeat of the same events for a course of six years or so, or so it seemed. I have no idea how six years passed like that, even when I can safely say I was a special kind of dim bulb. How did I do that?

Fast-forward to one night, when the pattern was broken...

...

I'd woken up vaguely aware that I'd screamed. My throat burned, and I was sweating what felt like needles from every pore, yet shivering at the same time. I'd barely had time to sit up before Yasaka was in the room, and the lights came on. I cried out a bit in shock. God, why'd ya have to blind me!?

"Issei, what's wrong?" Rhetorical question, even a bit annoying at this point. But I knew Yasaka well enough to know that she'd never ask a question she didn't mean to ask, and I appreciated that. I swallowed, eyes still pinched shut and my right arm thrown over my face, and spoke in a croaky voice. I'd probably done a good deal of screaming.

"I'm okay." A lie. Or at least not the whole truth. I had no idea if I was okay or not, and that at least would be telling you the truth. But Yasaka, no matter how much she understood, wouldn't accept that for an answer.

"'Okay' doesn't mean screaming in your sleep. Now, what's going on? It's happened before and I want to help but you have to let me first." I said nothing in response, just stubbornly held my arm over my eyes in a way I realized later was probably more than a bit rude. In the silence she chose to talk again.

"What was the nightmare about? Were you there again?" I nodded, suddenly remembering it for the first time and realizing that would be correct. A moment or so later I heard a click (that would be the light switch, thank God) and felt my bed sink a little under a new amount of weight. An arm bumped my elbow as it came down and a hand landed in my hair. Also kind of annoying but on the same level comforting, as it was intended to be. I'm certain I relaxed a little without ever realizing I'd ever tensed up.

"I'm so sorry, Issei," she said lowly, still stroking my scalp. "Do you need me to stay in here with you?"

Without any better way of responding, I simply shook my head. As if to indirectly override that, she seemed to wrap herself around me, protecting me from whatever it was that decided I should relive the past in dream form. I think I loved her for that, and appreciated that ability she had to know exactly what I needed even when I don't realize I need it.

She stayed there for a while before she thought I was asleep. And when that happened, she got up quietly and left the room. After that I chose to lay there, contemplating whatever conspiracies I could. She could be just trying to gauge what I do and don't believe was a popular hidden explanation for her behavior. Knowing me, she probably thought I wouldn't have noticed, but I did. Of course I'd never once considered at this time that she really did just care about my wellbeing and knew what had happened would always have that jarring effect on me, nor was I aware at all of any of the more disturbing things that would happen later. For now she was a mother-figure who might or might not be sincere, and any more or less than that was impossible to say.

Might know where she is, another part of me considered. She might even be a Devil!

No, she would've done something by now if she were a Devil, another subconscious voice argued. She very well could be exactly what she says she is: an aunt who you didn't know existed until you were left in her custody. You were very young then, after all.

Exactly.

And I fell asleep, still turning those last two sentences over and over in my mind. I didn't dream this time, except of things I can't remember, which was undoubtedly a mercy.

...

That was how the change started, or perhaps it led up to the change, I can't be certain. It certainly wasn't the first time I'd thought like that, and it wouldn't be the last.

It had been on a Sunday night (or perhaps early Monday morning, depending on how you define that transition time around midnight) and that next morning, unfortunately, meant school.

And I was, of course, very sluggish getting up. So sluggish, in fact, that Yasaka had to ask Sensei (who fortunately had gotten home some time that same night) to drive me there. Typically I would've had time to walk, but not today. I was, after all, very sluggish getting up.

He was talkative today, and I tried my best to talk to him.

"So, my young apprentice," he began in his usual mock-enthusiastic voice that to me was always his most genuine form of affection. A moment later he decided what he wanted to ask. "What's been going on?" A very mundane and honestly vague question, which he then decided to clarify by adding, "At school, I mean, with all those guys and gals ya happen to hang out with. Any fun events coming up and such?" I shrugged in response.

"I don't know. I barely even talk to them, actually." I saw him seem to turn this over in his mind, although his exact thoughts were completely unreadable, as they normally were.

"Well..." He began again, and I saw him drumming his fingers against the wheel. Had he been doing that the whole time? Probably. He also seemed to sway his head from side to side as he again considered what to say next. And he did. "You should do that more."

"Why?" Now I could see some of what he was thinking. It looked just a bit like confusion. And then it was gone.

"Because human beings are social animals, generally speaking. No matter how withdrawn a human is they're not built to be alone. Leave the being alone to the wild felines and rodents and such. If ya live up north you'd leave it to the moose and bears. We probably have some bears around here too, now that you think of it."

"And what do bears have to do with me making friends? Better question: how do you know for certain I'm a human?" I saw him smile now. He wagged a finger at me in a form of congratulation.

"Now that's the kind of thinking this world needs, especially in these dark times!" I grinned too.

"Those dark times being?" I asked in curiosity. He was probably just joking, or you could say times were always dark, or he could be serious.

"Why, the revolution of course!" He threw up his free hand and raised it into a belligerent fist, like a rebel seeking blood. In all his waving and gesturing the hand on the wheel didn't falter, and he seemed to know exactly where to steer while keeping perfectly stable, all while darting his eyes back and forth between myself and the road. Yasaka told me he'd been a stunt driver for a while, and then a professional racer, and it was apparent here.

There was a bit of silence, and then we were in the parking lot. I reached down under my seat for my backpack before realizing...

"Aw, shit!" He yelled, and then corrected himself. Yasaka had probably told him to tone down the profanity. He threw a hand over his mouth, muttered an "oops!" and corrected himself. "Oh, crap. Is 'crap' considered profanity?" I shrugged, and then decided to shake my head. He nodded in return. "Right-o, let's go get your backpack. How do you feel about driving really slow on the way back?"

I nodded, my smile bigger than ever.

...

"They could be aliens."

"What?"

That was my closest friend's first words as I approached her that afternoon, and we began the usual partial walk home. Ophis was her name, and she was one of the smartest people I'd ever met, although she clearly couldn't care any less than she already did. I'd told you about that, right?

"Those things that you mentioned. The Devils, right? They could be aliens, and what you saw was an abduction. They know you witnessed it and they created the identities of Yasaka and everyone else to keep an eye on you. Maybe even drive you mad in the process, so no one would ever believe what you say."

"I don't even believe what I say!"

"That's my point."

"You're not helping." I smiled grimly, and realized she probably was. "Besides, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I remember killing them."

"Them, maybe. But an alien species isn't just a handful of people. Unless..." And then she trailed off. "Unless they're a near-extinct race of parasites who had to abduct your family in order to use as hosts, and you killed some of them in the process!" She seemed to experience a sudden outburst of energy and she jumped up, as if brainstorming made her hyper. It probably did. Scratch that, definitely did.

"I might've killed all of them."

"Except the ones that are watching you now, of course."

"I still don't think so. It's not aliens."

"You still can't be certain of that."

"How, then? How did I kill them?" She seemed to have no answer, until she did.

"You're one of them," she said, grinning. I didn't smile back. It took her a moment but she realized she'd struck a nerve, and hard. We continued in silence for a while before eventually she turned one way and I turned the other.

That was how it usually was with Ophis - simple discussion. The one person I could bother telling anything to without being concerned how they'd take what I said. She didn't seem to care, and if she did I never saw it. I guess I preferred it that way. I'd understand much more in detail later.

...

Now comes the time when I'm home, and the first thing I do is sleep. And sleep means dreams.

"Promise me you'll find me," she says, and I nod into her shoulder.

"Okay," I almost whisper. "I'll try."

We're clinging to each other for dear life. I don't want this moment to end. I want it to stretch out until eternity and beyond the end of that. We'll never meet again, so just let "never" and "again" become irrelevant! I could stand there forever and ever and...

Suddenly I'm not.

I'm back in the park. The sky's purple. The bench is in front of me, and no one's on it. There's no fearful Irina standing behind, fearing for her life and for everyone else's. This time I'm alone.

There's an oscillating noise, grinding the insides of my ears in time with the now-apparent pulsing of the thing Irina's father had called an Entrapment Circle. It hurts, but I know there's nothing I can do about it. Instead I wait.

"BOOST!" some voice somewhere yells. Powerful, prideful, and murderous yet playful at the same time. I can imagine the speaker dressed in bright red battle armor and a cheery smile on his face, teeth stained in the blood of hundreds of fallen adversaries. The word he speaks is exactly as I'd heard it before.

I can feel it summon something within me; some part that I can perceive like a limb but located nowhere on my body, yet as connected to me as any limb if not more so. It stirs, and suddenly I want nothing more than to destroy this entire wreck that held so much pain. I want to smash and crack and stab and burn everything I see, and smile and laugh and celebrate and indulge in the victory of ending it! But...

But I can't. The place is irrelevant. The people in it were the true holders of that pain. The Devils that killed, the parents that were killed, and the children who died watching it. Without them it's just a place. And an empty place at that.

And I'm back in Irina's arms, hugging her even more tightly than before. I don't care how such a sudden transition is made, just want to enjoy this moment again, however much it may hurt later.

"I won't just try, I will." Now tears come freely.

"You'd better!" She sounds exactly as I remember, although she'd never said that. It's present - not just a memory but a moment. "Please, please just promise me you will! Not just trying, but you will!"

"I don't think I can," I respond honestly, and something seems to snap. Or crack, and gradually shatter. Just like I said I'd wanted to.

"Please..." She repeats it, and I can hear weeping as she does. She's in pain. "Please..." Weaker this time. "Please..." Fading, not just in volume but in presence. "Please..." I can't see her and I can still feel her solid against me, but she too is becoming empty. Like the playground. "Plea..." She never finishes it. She ceases to exist, and the girl I'm holding onto for dear life becomes a limp corpse.

That voice returns, somehow still bold yet saddened in one word. The same one word: "BOOST!"

I look up at the sky. It's still purple. I never left this place, and I wonder now why I ever thought I had. The noise never left either. Just keeps thrumming, never any change in volume or tone. The same sound forever and ever and ever and ever.

Tears come, and I wonder why. The answer might or might not be sitting on the tip of my tongue, but I still can't understand. Am I sad? Angry? Scared? Lonely? I don't know. I can conclude that I feel... nothing. I'm empty too.

And I stand there forever and ever and ever. Entirely empty.

...

Hello there. Toa of Science Fiction here. It's been a while.

So, yeah. After months this happened. I apologize for that, and if you've been patient then you have no idea how much it means to me. Especially the reader who got me to write this, you know who you are. And this was a bit of a shorter chapter but there's more to come, I promise. And I mean it.

And you can probably tell this is NOTHING like the source material. Not even close. Eventually it'll come to resemble something but otherwise don't expect it to turn into some erotic adventure story about some idiot who likes boobs and showing off his power. Just saying.

I'm okay with criticism of the constructive variety, but don't be shy about addressing anything. There's always room for improvement and that's part of the reason I write, so why not learn a little something in the process?

Thanks, and bye! :-{ )