So many things were impossible.

Keeping people from dying, for example. No matter how far Dave leapt, how fast he swung his sword, Clearing Eyes was there first. He was there with scarlet puddles on the floor, glass shards in places they shouldn't have been. Limbs bent in impossible ways, final cries shaking the TV Room. Kano calling the snake a bastard just before a pillar of screens trapped his ankle. Momo's pink hoodie more rust than peach. Something in Dave wanted to curl up into a little ball, the same something that sat heavy in his stomach like a rock. If he was already sick from seeing the Mekakushi Dan die, then what about Jade? Rose? John, if he wasn't already dead?

No, no. Not now. There were better times to think about that. Better times, including never. If anything, though, at least one of them would live. Clearing Eyes hadn't laid a finger on Marry once, not during his shooting frenzy. All those bullets were aimed at someone else. She didn't have a single cut on her skin, not a single broken bone, but to say that Clearing Eyes did nothing to her? Completely wrong. Something was happening. Something.

What a shitty observation in the middle of everyone dying, though, especially as the pillar holding Kano's ankle fell onto his head. Fuck that noise.

Kido, struggling before to move with a broken spine, stopped. Stopped for good. Don't think about it, Dave begged himself. Don't.

Impossible, though. Impossible not to think about it.

So thoughts crowded and cluttered Dave's mind, filling each and every corner of his focus. Ene (as the girl insisted she was) picked a bad time to become human again. And Momo was out of blood. Hibiya was out of oxygen – Clearing Eyes couldn't have stopped choking the clairvoyant, no matter how many times the coolkid swung. Every time, it ended in being pushed away. Every time, it was someone dying, but not Jade. Not Rose. Not Dave himself.

It didn't matter how many times the three of them picked away at the snake with hands and swords, or tried to bring one of the Dan members away. The Mekakushi Dan died first. Always them first. And never, Dave realised, never him or Jade or Rose. Were they being saved for last? Was that sick fuck saving them until the Dan was all dead, just because he could? The coolkid couldn't stand it. He had to stand it, if just to save one single person. But he couldn't.

And neither could Marry. She wasn't herself. The albino Dave knew wasn't the pale figure up in the air, a backsplash of brass gears behind her. Dave didn't know anyone who floated surrounded by nine glistening, translucent little serpents. But Clearing Eyes did, didn't he? Screaming something about tragedies, about bringing everything back to the start.

A reset. Exactly what Shintaro was talking about in his Pesterchum memo, long before they took off for this mission. The thing that Jade and Rose begged not to have, begging with the kind of breath Dave ran out of forever ago. What if it happened now? What if all they worked for went back to the beginning, years ago, when the Mekakushi Dan first got into all this? What about when John first died? Fuck the fact that basically no one would remember anything. The idea sent shivers down Dave's spine.

But still, how long would he be able to feel shivers for? There was a glass shard – no, sword – pressed against the coolkid's throat, and it burned like hell. Especially when it sank deeper into his skin. And the wall wasn't made of cotton marshmallow. Being pushed against it, hoodie and muscle and bones and all, wasn't anything close to fun.

It was getting harder to breathe, let alone speak. Harder, harder, harder. Jade and Rose must have felt the same, having their necks to the edge of the very same blade. Clearing Eyes was still going on about turning back pages, setting actors on stages, but Dave? He couldn't listen. For every 'fuck you' that formed in his mind or plea for no reset, the sword dug further into his throat. Far enough to hurt, getting nowhere near better.

This was not…