Our Armageddon

Chapter 13

AuthorNote: Thanks peeps. I don't have much to say at the moment. Having trouble with getting writer's block recently...thus the inconsistent, kinda short, and rare chapters...But don't worry. I plan to see this thing through.

Have fun reading!

Erika stared at the matchbox in her hands. Starting a campfire in the middle of Tokyo was no easy task albeit a bit easier now that the entire city had been reduced to rubble.

"At least we won't run out of kindling." Erika smirked at her thoughts. Her eyes still hovered over the box of matches. She had taken one out of the box already but had stopped short upon attempting to strike it.

"Erika?" Masaomi spoke from her right. "Light the match already…It's frigid out here. And we're all hungry."

She looked over to the young blond boy. His attention had already diverted to Anri and Mikado, who stood a bit of distance away. They were caught up in conversation. Seemingly something serious as their body language held social tics; Mikado scratching the back of his neck and Anri's gaze gravitating towards Kida then away upon seeing his eyes upon her.

"Yo! Erika! Start the fire, will you?" Erika turned back to see Masaomi glaring at her.

"I took these off a bunch of dead kids." Was all Erika could think but she didn't dare let that thought out of her head. "You probably knew them…" She shook herself out of her thoughts and started to strike the match against the box but at this point she had had her gloves off for too long. Her fingers stiffened by the cold.

"For fucks sake…" Masaomi snatched the match and the box out of her hands, struck it to ignite, and then attempted to get the kindling to light. The flame went out almost instantly. "Look, it's cold and windy…This could take some time to get started…Go inside and warm up. You've done more than your share of work already."

Erika nodded and rose to her feet. She started making her way up the stairs when she noticed Simon approaching. "Simon! Where have you been?"

Simon placed a cardboard box next to Masaomi. "Food. We need to cook it soon. Meat will spoil quick."

"Where'd you find this stuff?" Kida was nearly drooling just at the thought of eating.

"Hmm…" The Russian's gaze fell. "I needed to know. So I went back home. Just for awhile, just to make sure."

"…Simon." Erika sighed.

Masaomi silently went back to lighting the fire.

"Did you find what you needed?" Erika asked as Simon walked past her on the stairs.

He nodded. "I found nothing spared from disaster. It is what I needed to see."

Shizuo stroked Izaya's hair as Izaya leaned his head against Shizuo's shoulder. They had moved inside the Raijin Academy building some time ago and ended up sitting against the wall of one of their old classrooms. They had revisited certain areas and changed what had transpired there, even if time couldn't be reversed, they would rewrite their memories.

"Izaya, remember when we shared lunch on the roof?"

"I remember I made Shizu-chan spill his milk by making him laugh! I brought you a replacement the next day though~"

"Yeah, and when you were sent to the nurse with a fever, I came to make sure you were okay."

"But I didn't want you to leave."

"You begged me to stay. So I skipped class for you. Just so I could sit next to you."

"Nn. Shizu-chan has always been very kind…" Izaya rubbed his face against Shizuo's neck.

Shizuo's fingers stilled momentarily. "Izaya…?"

"I didn't really deserve it though…I wasn't a very good pers-"

"Tch! You've always been too hard on yourself." Shizuo tried to divert Izaya from his self-destructive thinking.

Izaya didn't say another word but by now Shizuo knew this didn't mean much. The man was always thinking as if he had an inability to stop. The blond wrapped his other arm around the raven feeling his shivers increase.

"We should be getting back…" Shizuo suggested. Izaya didn't respond so Shizuo took a peek to see if the raven had fallen asleep. He was almost surprised when he saw his eyelids drooping but two red orbs still shifting around the enclosed space. Shizuo rubbed his hands over Izaya's arms. "Come on. You're cold. We really need to-"

"Shizuo." Izaya spoke his full name with little emotion. "I want to go to Shinjuku."

"…What? Why?!" Shizuo's voice rumbled as if he were angry about the idea. But he felt more scared than anything else. Confusion was the second emotion to surface right after the initial shock of the request.

Izaya shifted his weight to stand. "I…" He looked away from Shizuo. "I need something very important from my apartment…"

"Your apartment…Simon said it burned down!"

"Nn…Even so…I want to know for sure…" His voice trailed off.

Shizuo sighed. He already knew he couldn't argue with the other. The man was stubborn and at times…obsessive.

Once something got into Izaya's mind, it wouldn't leave until the man had picked the thought clean.

Erika 's eyes were downcast as she walked into their shared living space. Simon was already talking with the other two in the room, Kyohei and Walker. Kyohei wasn't doing much of anything except zoning out while watching Walker mess with the hand-crank radio they had found prior. Simon would ask questions and Kyohei would answer. So to say the Russian was talking to both Kyohei and Walker wasn't quite right.

Simon would ask questions to both Kyohei and Walker. But only Kyohei would really say anything in response.

Walker seemed to be getting frustrated for one reason or another. It was a pattern; he'd adjust the radio dial in an attempt to find a usable station. He'd gasp as if he'd heard something other than static that no one else heard then groan as if he'd lost the right frequency.

Rinse and repeat.

Erika cringed and tightened her fists. "We're all slowly loosing our minds, aren't we?"

Kyohei lazily tilted his head from a bottle of whiskey in his hand, towards the young woman who continued to stand isolated in the doorway. He looked again briefly at the now near-empty whiskey, a lucky find he'd kept hidden. He hadn't been using it much until a day or two ago. Each day he seemed to drink proportionally more than the last. At first he didn't speak. He didn't feel the need or the point in helping the girl. The world was doomed anyway. But he could feel a part of himself deep in the back of his mind, yelling and screaming for him to get up, to go to her and to say something – to say anything.

This annoyed Kyohei. He didn't want it anymore, didn't want to care. It hurt and he knew it would continue to hurt. But despite all that, despite the fact he wished he could stop caring, he couldn't. He just wasn't ready yet to give up that piece of himself.

"Erika." Kyohei almost didn't recognize his own voice, now scratchy and worn, a bit slurred. The girl looked up at him. At this point Kyohei couldn't think of what to say or what he might have said in the times before the destruction. "There's no use spending so much time in your own head. Whatever you're thinking about, don't let it destroy you."

"…don't let yourself destroy you like I am." Kyohei shook the remnant thought from his head and groaned.

The girl relaxed but once again her eyes gravitated to look at the floor. Kyohei opened his mouth to say something else but no words would come. He searched his mind for something to say but came up short.

"Why? Why?! Why-why-why-why-why!" Walker growled and tossed the radio towards the other side of the room. He put his head in his hands, taking several quick deep breaths – panting.

At this point Erika sighed and walked towards her friend in need. She knelt down beside him and put her hand on his back. "You tried…it's all ri-"

Walker smacked Erika's hand away and stood. "It's not 'all right!' We're all going to die here! Doesn't that thought bother any of you?!"

Erika stood as well, glaring daggers at Walker. "So, what would you have us do, Walker? Huh? Since you apparently are the only one of us who cares about living." The words tasted like venom in her mouth but she couldn't stop herself from speaking. "What do you want me to say? While you're having a panic attack?"

"The truth!" Walker tossed a glare right back at Erika.

"The truth?" Erika snarled, "You want me to say we're all probably doing to die here? That the world we knew is gone? That our world is dead and soon we will be too? Whether it's from starvation, hypothermia, or some shit disease? That's the 'truth' you want to hear from me? The truth in your head?"

Walker growled. "We're all just screwing around day-to-day. We have no plan and we aren't making one. We'll run out of supplies sooner or later or we'll freeze to death. Or, hey! Maybe we'll start killing each other once we all go insane! If we live that long."

Walker pushed the radio with his foot. A melancholy expression on his face, he waited for Erika's next retort. When it didn't come, he turned to look at her.

Erika wasn't glaring at him anymore. Nearly all emotion had drained from her face. She slightly shook her head while looking at the boy in front of her. "If it's so pointless to you and you don't want to wait for death then go for a walk and find it."

"Christ, Erika…" Kyohei sighed. "That's a little harsh."

Erika's eyes flitted towards where she had entered, as if to challenge Walker. When Walker didn't make a move to leave, she walked towards him, picked up the radio and thrust it back into Walker's grasp. "This is your lifeline right now."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Walker let out the breath he'd been holding.

"It means, until you find something else, this is your reason for staying alive right here, right now." Erika gave Walker a small, forced smile. "It may all be pointless. We may all end up dead soon or maybe the pain of this new world will never end, but you'll find reasons to keep living. We all will. We all have to."

Walker looked down at the radio in his hands and nodded solemnly.

"Celty…" Shinra held the headless woman as her body shook. "Whatever it is that you're keeping to yourself, I can see it hurting you. Why won't you talk to me about whatever it is?"

They were lying on the bed. Their bed. The piles of clothes and supplies had been pushed to the cold floor. They were wrapped in the bed sheets that they hadn't changed since the start of all the madness. They smelled musty and they provided little warmth at the moment. It was all very familiar, yet eerie because this home wasn't the same place, except it was.

"Please…please tell me." Shinra held Celty tighter in his hold. He ran a hand over the smooth surface of her helmet and wondered why she kept it on at all times now. He would have thought she wouldn't need it now with how few people they saw wandering the city.

The other survivors were far and few between. Most didn't want to be bothered. Some of them seemed scared - others were terrified, running off when they had been approached.

Shinra had gone out a couple times with a few of the others. Once they had run into a man who was hostile towards them and carried a gun. He would have been a threat if it hadn't been for Simon who immediately disarmed the man who, without his gun to make him feel safe, ran off without a word.

Celty abruptly pushed Shinra away, sitting up and resting her "head" in her hands. He watched as her grip tightened, as her fingers scraped down the sides of the plastic, and watched as she would occasionally run her hands around her neck as if something were there that she wasn't used to or didn't want because it felt uncomfortable. Shinra watched Celty fidget and it felt strange since Celty rarely used to fidget.

Shinra watched his beloved as she fell apart.

For a moment, Shinra thought he might have heard actual sounds of crying coming from Celty. But he shook the thought away, tried to attribute it to sleep deprivation or intense stress.

However, the sounds that seemed to be gasps and sobs continued and Shinra came to a theory he didn't think could be possible.

"Celty…Why haven't you taken off your helmet?" Shinra's voice cracked near the end of his sentence.

Shinra watched Celty's body stiffen to a greater degree. Her tremors ceased, the noises stopped, and it was as if she had turn to stone.

To be continued.

AuthorNote: sorry this chapter is super short. like I said, I'm working on tearing down writer blocks.

See you in Chapter 14!