Cancerous
A/N: The End. La Grande Finale. Take this as a two-hour finale to a usually 30-min series. TL;DR because it's the finale, and I don't want to push back the supposed suspense and angst and pain.
/
3:16PM. A day and two hours before Akari meets Isana Yashiro.
She looks at Yuki's face, and in the dim light of the room it's hard to see whether his expression is of relief or worry.
"So you'll do it?" He asked.
She shrugs, "I didn't say that I would."
"But you can do it?" He presses.
"I can, but you're right." She sighs, "It is unethical."
"But you've done worse!"
He knows this, they both do. She once acted as a pimp in some foreign country, and broke someone out of prison, even passed around poisons disguised as medicinal drugs- but she has never done anything to her body.
Which makes her raise her voice, "Really? You're giving me that argument? Tell me then, Yuki, what could I have done to my body that seems far worse than this?"
"You were a drug carrier-"
She was fourteen when she first transported drugs in a bottle of baby powder and baking soda.
"And those drugs weren't out to kill people." She lied.
He doesn't know about the poisonous drugs, and neither did she. She thought they died of an overdose, but the news told her otherwise.
She doesn't want him to experience this, so she says, "You're still young, Yuki. Get out of this business while you still can."
She places a hand on his shoulder.
But he shrugs it off, saying, "And be back on the streets? Back to that house? No."
He was an orphan with a brilliant mind and a warm heart, but he was raised in a science lab, or so he says, that trained him to be a computer, a detective, an oracle-but he never wanted to be any of those.
"You're a smart kid. There are better places for you than this."
She wants him to run away because she can't.
He turns to her again, looks up at her, "So are you going to do it, or not?"
The Silver Trade made him into what he was meant to be before, cold and decisive.
She turns away, and he is looking at her back. Her fists clench and she asks, "Am I going to kill someone?"
He hesitates. "What?"
"Am I going to kill someone?" She repeats.
"He didn't say-" He pauses. "Yes. You might."
She bites her lips briefly. She thinks on the possibility of her inflicting death directly. "How much are we talking again?"
"Four hundred thousand dollars."
Her eyes widen a little in shock, and she turns to look at him. "Dollars?"
She hasn't been paid in dollars before and wonders how much the conversion rate is.
He thinks she's going to agree to this, and smiles. "All for you. There's an unmentioned extra if it goes successfully."
"And how would I know if it's successful?" She thinks that it will be if she kills someone.
"You won't, and neither will I."
There is a brief moment when her eyes catch the cheerful look of his face.
"How much is your share, then?"
He shakes his head, "None. The four grand's all yours."
She steps close and places both of her hand on either of his shoulders, "Yuki."
His smile falls. "Yes, Akari?"
"I'll give you a hundred." She hugs him tightly, "You deserve that, at least."
Yuki, she believes, deserves a place to call home.
/
A few days after the incident with Isana Yashiro, Akari comes home to the sight of Usagi holding the box she thought she kept under her bed.
Usagi places the box on the coffee table. "Where did you get this anyway, Akari?"
"From a friend."
Akari picks up the box and holds it in her hand.
Usagi leans back into the sofa. "And am I going to assume that this friend has something to do with Kings?"
"Sort of." She shrugs as she discreetly pockets the box. "He's in a pretty complicated situation, really." She chuckles.
"This friend, is he dead?"
Usagi's serious demeanor makes her nervous.
"No." She says a little too quickly.
"I have nothing to worry about, then?"
"Why worry?" She sits beside Usagi and hugs her as an act of reassurance.
"I just figured that thing has a lot to do with Kings."
She crosses her arms over her chest. "And what would that be?"
"The news has been talking about Strains lately."
"And?"
"SCEPTER4 knows where they are, even if they aren't being showy or anything. They just know."
She feels like she knows where this conversation is heading, and decides to lean back on the sofa, muttering, "They'll never find you."
"But dammit, I feel like shit just hiding here!" Usagi curses and Akari is shocked still into her seat, "When can I go with you, Akari?"
She hisses, "Usagi."
"I'm no longer a child and you're no longer my mother." She says this because for the longest time Akari has been treating her like a child, overly protecting her like some clingy mother she's seen on soap operas. "I want to go with you, Akari."
Akari laughs at her sudden outburst, "And where are we going to go?"
"Anywhere!" She stands up and illustrates the scene, acting like those characters she's seen on actions films, "To the Silver Trade! I wanna kick someone's ass, stage a heist, steal a car, throw cargo out of a plane, go out and kill-"
"I'm no murderer."
"But you have killed people before!" Usagi turns to her and sees her shocked expression fade into one of guilt and regret. "I know it, Akari. When you come home late and cold, with your hands shaking and smelling of shitty alcohol-"
Akari tries to break the tension with a half-hearted joke, "Hey, the bars I go to are-"
"Shut up." It doesn't work and Usagi's face is becoming harder, "When you come home reeking of that stench and I'm fucking forced to deal with it as if it's normal."
"It is." Akari grits her teeth.
Usagi sighs through her nose, biting her mouth into a thin line as she walks away before asking, "How is killing people normal?"
"They're bad people." It was the simplest answer she could say.
But still, Usagi doesn't believe it, and mocks her, "And what are you, Akari? Some twisted hero?"
"I knew what I was doing, Usagi." Akari stands up and calls after her, "How about you? Before I found you, how many fires have you started?"
"Don't go there."
"How many, Usagi?" She moves forward and kneels on the sofa, leaning against the back as she exclaims, "How many kids watched as their childhood turn to dust? Watched their parents burn? How many of them do you remember?"
She whips toward Akari, looking devastated and angry, "I wasn't in control!"
Akari leaves the sofa and walks towards Usagi, "If I wasn't there, if I didn't have pity enough to save you from the gutter, where would you be?"
She stops when Usagi starts to cry, willing the memories of the fire away with her tears, "I don't know."
But the tears don't stop her, "No. You know where you'll be. We both know where you'll be. Right now, if I was to say, abandon you, where would you be? Where would you go? Who could you go to? I saved you, Hikaru."
She has, at least that's what she believes.
"Just trust me on this, Usagi." She embraces Usagi's shaking form. "We've both been left behind. We could have been eaten alive by the world, but we're here. And you're the only family I have right now."
They stand in silence. Usagi's tears soak into Akari's shirt.
"Have you killed someone?" Akari could feel Usagi's hands grip hard on her arms.
"I think I have."
"Okay." Usagi lightly pushes her away, "Don't forget that it's your turn to buy dinner tonight."
Akari smiles and blinks a few tears out of her eyes.
/
Usagi rolls her eyes at the dark-haired male now lying on the ground, "Yes, princess. Now move!"
She forces him out of the range of the electric blast by kicking him. She meets the electric blast with her own, creating a pillar of fire in front of her.
"Oh, isn't this lovely." says the man.
She hasn't seen him before, but his brown hair and green eyes remind her of Osamu Daichi, and judging by his aura, he might as well be part of MASANORI.
She wipes the sweat from her cheek and smirks at him, "You freaks in MASANORI must get off a lot on violence, huh?"
He chuckles and shakes his head, "And you kids practically get off on anything."
"What's MASANORI doing here, anyway?"
"Handling this situation better than SCEPTER4 ever will." He surprises her by revealing a hand from behind, charging a ball of concentrated electricity.
She could have dodged it if it wasn't for Saruhiko kicking her out of the way as he shouted, "Move!"
So both of them were on the floor now, him on his stomach and she on her back. She glared at him, before quickly rising to her feet and charging towards the other man while setting her feet aflame. She aimed several kicks to his head, his chest, his legs, but he managed to evade all of them before sending an electric bolt towards her.
She didn't have enough time to dodge it perfectly, but when she did, she was sent rolling against the asphalt.
She stopped in front of Saruhiko, who has risen to his feet with his blade ready. She was about to stand up, but his foot on her back prevented her.
He increased his weight on her back, "Oi! Don't be reckless!"
"I had it under control." She growled.
He frowned. "No. He was going to strike and you weren't fast enough."
"Well, thanks for that, princess." She managed to shove his foot off of her and rise to her feet in one swift movement.
He takes a step forward, taking to her aside, "You don't know what you're up against."
"And neither do you!" She shouts as she jumps high, kicking her her feet and sending several waves of fire to the man.
He looks at her with a wicked glint in his eye and says, "It seems both of you don't know anything."
He stomps a foot onto the ground and sends an electric shockwave that disperses the fire and stops her in mid-air her before she could land a fist on him. He takes another step forward and punches forward, sending another shockwave that sends her back and away. Saruhiko, on the other hand, sends aura blades that cut through the electric shockwave, but that was not enough for him to save himself, he was also pushed back.
Nagare looks at the two teenagers who are both on the ground. He knows who both of them are.
"Fushimi Saruhiko, third-in-command of Shizume City's police force, SCEPTER4." He says with spite, before looking over at Usagi, "And Kagome Hikaru, oftentimes known as Usagi, you're quite an interesting figure, aren't you? Mayonaka Akari's supposed-"
Usagi stops him there, as she rises to her feet, "And who're you?"
He watches Saruhiko stand as well, before showing them a confident grin, "To save you the introduction, I'm MASANORI's new King."
/
Reisi looks at Daichi, and Daichi looks at him. They're both tired, panting through the heavy atmosphere. Daichi hasn't even unsheathed his blade, whilst Reisi already notices small notches and cracks on his.
"I have to admit," Reisi straightens his stance, "you are as great as your father once was."
Daichi wipes the sweat off the corner of his mouth, chuckles, and says, "Where'd you get that old piece of news?"
"Just an old folk tale."
"Folk tales, huh?" Daichi remembers all the things he's heard about his father, "What, the former King a fan of those legends?"
"Apparently." Reisi recalls seeing for the first time the former King's extensive library of books filled with legends, mythologies, and old wives' tales about kings and queens. The former King was one who kept himself to his books, much like how Reisi would keep to his puzzles and tea, "He had me read all of them."
Daichi smirks, saying aside, "So where does dad come in?"
"He's wanted for several charges of insubordination and disobedience of the law." Reisi answered.
The former King, Osamu Nobuyuki, was a man who came out of the storybooks he has read. A master swordsman and a skilled swordsmith, Osamu Nobuyuki was one of the few who have witnessed the true power of the Dresden Slate, one of the few who had knowledge of the secrets of what the Dresden Slate really is, and one of the few who died because of it.
But Daichi doesn't know that.
"He's a very traditional man. These modern-day rules don't apply to him." Daichi shrugs.
"MASANORI used to be about tradition." Reisi comments. He remembers when MASANORI's uniform was hand-tailored kimonos and hakamas, when their weapons were custom-made swords and bayonets.
"His MASANORI," Daichi says through his teeth, "And he carried that tradition to his grave."
Reisi knows about MASANORI's sudden incorporation into the country's military, illegally producing weapons that were once only seen in science fiction, but he doesn't know where the weapons are sent, "You've been mass-producing weapons, it seems. What for?"
Daichi's actually surprised that Reisi doesn't know this. "Haven't you heard? She used MASANORI. Lied and told me that the military was interested in our weapons, apparently she meant that she had a team that wants the Kings dead."
"Team?" Reisi's more shocked by this than with her lying and Daichi believing.
"Yeah," Daichi nods, "Apparently Akari has other friends."
He's heard about blueprints being passed around the underground from a long time ago, a blueprint of a device that could detect the Dresden Slate, and a blueprint of a weapon that could kill a King. One would assume that the blueprints would have been brought and built, but present rumors say that the blueprints has gone missing, stolen in fact.
And he only knew one person with the gall to do it.
"And who would these other friends be?" Reisi dared to ask.
"Friends that aren't me and you." Daichi grips at air, suddenly feeling as if Reisi would strike him then and there, "Friends on the other side perhaps."
And when Reisi moves strike him, Daichi doesn't flinch. And neither when a sudden blast of cold air sweeps past him when Reisi unsheathes his saber and points it to his neck.
"You were mass-producing weapons for a criminal." Reisi says, having seen past Daichi's talkative facade, having noticed the small sparks of electricity in the man's palm ever since he asked why MASANORI was suddenly mass-producing weapons.
"And you are helping a criminal escape." Daichi says before he jumps back, giving him enough time to duck and aim an electrified palm to Reisi's stomach.
He blocks the attack with his sword, amazed at how Daichi's palm isn't at all cut by the steel. He remarks, "Your father would be disappointed."
"He has always been." Daichi grounds out as he crouches low and swings a leg out to imbalance Reisi.
He evades it, jumps backwards. Daichi, on the other hand, swings his leg back in as he turns his body to the side, putting his weight on his hands, before he performs a reversed catapult. His hands push him high off the ground, as he aims the back of his heel towards Reisi.
The acrobatic move stuns Reisi for a moment, causing him to evade Daichi's attack at the last minute.
Reisi straightens himself, fixes his askew glasses with a hand as he says, "MASANORI is better than this."
Daichi looks at him from the corner of his eye, and says, "She saved MASANORI from the brink."
It was true. When Daichi was just crowned King, he wondered if which was colder, the tile of prison cells or the concrete of the streets.
/
"You're a King now." She stills herself as she sets her eyes on the sight of the Damocles Sword. It's one thing to see it through a lens, and it's another thing to see it with one's own eyes. It was green, of course, and shaped much like a traditional katana, with a dragon encircling it as if alive. She's almost afraid at the thought of wielding such power.
"Help me, Akari." Daichi pleads, a spark of green electricity dancing around his hand.
The trepidation is evident in his voice and it nearly matches her when she says with a nervous smile, "I don't work with Kings, remember?"
He clenches his fist and the sparks disappear. He smirks when he asks, "Then how about working with a friend?"
And so she helps him, and he realizes that she knows more about Kings than he does. She introduces him to several people; drug lords, foreign pimps, hired mercenaries, blind fortunetellers, and he's so overwhelmed by the kinds of people she works with.
One day she introduces him to a weapons dealer, a middle-aged woman who can light a cigarette by firing a pistol, and there he finds that the future of MASANORI is his and his alone.
"You're a dead man's son, and dead men tell no tales. The future's looking bleak and bright, child."
And when he hears about Akari's plan: La Ultimo Grande Finale,
"Akari, I can't do this." He says immediately.
"Osamu Daichi can't, but you're no longer just that. You're MASANORI."
He shakes his head, "And MASANORI cannot help you."
"Just think about it." She says, an obvious tone to tiredness in her voice, "If we can find the missing pieces of the Dresden Slate, we can be rid of this curse!"
"I'm a King now, I can't just shrink away from the responsibility-"
She starts talking in a way that seems too dramatic, as if his being King is something so simple, "The responsibility that was never yours in the first place. You may be his son, but you aren't the sole heir-"
"Bullshit, Akari." When he stands up, he can see her visibly still and her expression fall, "He chose me because he believed in me!"
She straightens up as well, and looks him straight in the eye, " I helped you because I trusted you."
"We can't do this. Not anymore."
/
He lunges, quickly unsheathing his blade to meet Reisi's.
Reisi smirks at the sight of the famed Kazesōsha, the unbreakable blade of the first Green King. The sight of a dragon etched on the blade is enough to make him think of how formidable the Green clan once was. Something inside him wants to test the strength of the blade, to see the mortality of the legend.
Instead, he says, "You knew, and yet you still continued."
Daichi presses the blade against the hilt of the saber. "I had no other choice."
Reisi steps back, allowing himself to relax his stance, if only for a moment, "You allowed yourself to be fooled."
Daichi straightens his stance, places himself in an offensive stance much like that of his father's, much to his disdain, "What about you? Has she never lied to you?"
Reisi ignores this because they both know the answer, instead, he says, "Well, now we know where MASANORI stands." And grins at the sight of Daichi likening his father's battle stances, it makes him predictable, "With their leader complying to a criminal's petty demands."
"You don't know anything!"
Daichi surprises Reisi by tossing his blade in the air and jumping high. He grabs his blade and spins mid-air, aiming the cutting edge of his blade towards Reisi. He attempts to block it with his sword, but he failed to notice the thin electric charge surrounding the blade.
The electric shock forces Reisi to let go of his saber, and he hears it clatter to the floor and under Daichi's foot. He isn't used to the vulnerability.
"I know where she came from and where she's going to end up." Reisi's arrogant tone hides his secret fear of vulnerability.
"Dead, you mean?" Daichi raises an eyebrow in curiosity.
Reisi pauses, thinks for a moment that if he lunges and grabs at his sword there only half a chance that he could pry it off the man's heavy foot, but if he surprises him, then-then, the idea comes to him.
"As long as she keeps doing what she does best." He replies.
Daichi notices the growing smirk on Reisi's face, dares to ask, "And what does she do best?"
/
A younger Akari first meets an equally younger Reisi six years ago, when he was still the fresh-faced and impulsive third-in-command of SCEPTER4, and when she was just another face-in-the-crowd, but actually a brilliant out-of-school hacker.
He's heard of her notorious pseudonym, QuineNeferTi3, and he's heard of the damage she can do with a mere laptop and a cell tower, but he can't quite put a face to the name, so he devises a plan to bait her. He asks around and merits glares and worried glances. He roams about dark streets and hears suspicious murmurs. He posts in forums and message boards, but his only replies were from admins requesting that he remove his post. He goes into secret chatrooms, only to have "other members of the chatroom have gone offline."
He was about to give up, honestly, until one early morning:
~Cl30p4tr1a is now online~
Cl30p4tr1a: 8pm. Tomorrow.
Cl30p4tr1a: Daylight.
He blinks. He doesn't know who this is, or what they're saying.
BlueMan63: What?
Cl30p4tr1a: 8pm at Daylight. Show up or don't.
Cl30p4tr1a: She won't care. It's your loss.
BlueMan63: Who?
Cl30p4tr1a: The Queen.
~Cl30p4tr1a is now offline~
Half of him thinks he's being played, while the other half of him wants to see if he plays along. So the next night, he goes into the Red Light district and searches for Daylight.
When he does come across the bar, there is only a handful of people watching a man murmur a poem on stage, and a sole bartender attending to uninterested patrons. For a while he stands idly on a corner, before a bottle is pressed to his chest and he looks up and sees-
He isn't shocked by how she looks, but he is shocked by the way she knows him already. There are dark halfmoons under her eyes and the tiredness on her face is highlighted by smudged makeup, the wideset grin of her mouth chapping her lips. She leads him to a table right in front of the stage, brightly lit compared to rest of the dim pub.
They skip the introductions, mainly because it's she who tells him who he is before she introduces herself.
"Hacking. Stealing. Detonating. It's what I do best." She raises a glass of caramel-colored beer and takes a sip, urging him to do the same.
He doesn't drink, and compliments her instead, "Your reputation precedes you."
She frowns slightly, but places the grin back on her face, "Of course, this city wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't for my help."
"Your help?"
She grins even wider, and he could almost see her gums, before she leans in close to his face and whispers right against his cheek, "Ever heard of the Silver Trade?"
He pulls back, offended by the smell of her breath, "No."
She laughs before drinking the rest of her glass. She bites her lips in a sour expression as she swallows the liquid, the bitter aftertaste lingering in her mouth, "You have me to thank for that."
He pushes his drink towards her. "What is it, exactly?"
She looks at him now, and never takes her eyes away as she says, "If you wanna put the bad people to justice, all the while climbing up SCEPTER4's ranks, then there's is the place to start."
He puts rumors and pieces and evidence together, and assumes, "You're working for an illegal market and you talk about it like it's nothing?"
She laughs, loudly, before asking, "And you're not going to arrest me?"
He offers her a smirk of his own and thinks that it matches hers, "You could help me."
She sighs. "You're not that desperate, are you?"
"I think I am."
She places a hand palm-up on the table. "Got money?"
He smirks. Takes something out of his pocket and presses his hand over hers, feeling her nails rub against his palm as she takes whatever he has for her.
She retracts her hand, places the glass on the table, and counts the bills quickly. When she finishes, she pockets the entire thing and grabs his drink,
"Then we have a deal." She says before tipping the bottle to his direction.
/
Mayonaka Akari, in the present, is currently waiting. Half of her curses her own self silently; her recklessness brought this upon herself. And the other half of her curses out loud,
"Goddammit that man."
She rubs her free hand over her face and groans.
"It was that ring. That tiny, insignificant ring."
She recalls that moment, the mere spur-of-the-moment, when he asked her to be his wife. It was unexpected for both of them, she thinks; he wasn't one to suddenly ask such trivial things.
"And I fell for it." She deadpans, asking herself "But oh god was I smitten, was I in love?" as she breathes heavily and thinks about the impossibility of the situation.
"Shit, Akari."
She's remembered something. She runs towards the warehouse's computers, internally thanking Daichi that he hasn't changed anything in their so-called "former home." She switches on a computer, but hesitates when prompted to log in.
She thinks, "Well obviously they've deleted me from the computer." as she types in her username, May0naka 4kar1, her password, QuineNeferTi3, silently hoping. She doesn't want to verify it the longer way of hacking Daichi's and downloading the program and the data and-
But then her old desktop is loaded, and she can see the picture of her, Daichi, and Yasumaru lying on the asphalt and smiling upwards at the camera, she can't help but pause.
"If only things could be as they were before."
But she is snapped back to reality when she feels a tremor in the ground, "Daichi," she thinks, before she scans through her programs and looks for the tracker.
"Why didn't I see through it?" She says as she types in, Munakata Reisi, and enters the password, dirt popsicle, smiling to herself.
But she doesn't press ENTER on the keyboard.
"If he's still wearing it-"
She backs away from the computer. "Oh god, Akari, what are we doing? Why are we going after something that he's bound to throw away?"
She looks at her hand and how to ring fits her well. She dared to wear it again before confronting the two men, even, under the very pretense that it would be a waste. But as she looks at it now, she feels mocked by it.
She sighs, holds the ring in between her thumb and index finger, and presses it onto the keyboard: ENTER
She doesn't look at the screen. Not yet. Instead she looks at the ring, says,
"He's learning."
She smiles, and feels herself flush as she remembers a memory.
/
It's their second time to do this, but it's the first time she's felt a tinge of worry for him.
"If you're really going to do this, then I have no other choice." She tries to say monotonously as she presses a velveteen box in her hand.
They're seated in a booth in another one of those dark pubs. He doesn't like the smell of polished wood and alcohol, and she doesn't like the smell of his perfume. She's drinking some cocktail with a foreign name and he's drinking spiked green tea. It's a tasteless drink, she says, but it's the drinks that he dislikes the least.
"A ring?" He asks as his face heats up when he opens the box. It was unexpected for her to propose at such an early stage in their relationship.
And for her to act so nonchalantly, "Wear it."
"No," He looks at her directly, trying his best to muster up his calm, "I just never thought about you as the type to-"
"Oh fuck, I'm not proposing or anything." She says, rolls her eyes, "It's a tracking device. So that I know where you are."
"Oh." He can't say that he's a little disappointed.
The look on his face makes her laugh, but she grins instead. "Oh indeed."
"Thank you." He wears the ring, shows it off to her like a soon-to-be bride to her best friend, "Fits me well, doesn't it?"
She laughs this time, "Sure."
/
She isn't as shocked as she thought she'd be, but her jaw hangs agape and her eyes widen by a fraction before she bites her lower lip and smirks.
"He's learning from me."
And when Akari looks up, she can see the map of the warehouse, together with all the bombs she has planted, and a bright violet dot flashing on the screen. She smiles to herself and immediately comes up with an idea.
"This changes the game entirely."
She sees a bomb labeled 13 near the violet dot's position. She types in the number 13 and hits ENTER.
/
BANG!
A flash bomb detonates before Reisi is able to successfully stand. He topples to the ground, and Daichi does the same. The loud echo of the bomb mutes the sound of Kazesōsha clattering on the floor. The blinding light renders both of them to the ground, clutching their palms to their eyes in a childish attempt to rub out the brightness.
But Daichi's prepared, or so he thinks, and he remembers that he's placed a pair of goggles on his head as a precautionary reason (Akari just loves surprises that involve flash bangs and fireworks). So he lowers the goggles to allow his eyes to adjust easier. Seeing as Reisi is still clutching his palms to his eyes, his glasses raised above his eyebrows, Daichi bolts and-
He catches himself before he falls facedown. Somehow, his foot that was placed over Reisi's blade is stuck to the floor, and the sword started dissolving and dissipating into the air. A bright blue circle appears on the ground around him.
"I never knew the police was one to use dirty tricks." Daichi comments as Reisi stands up, extending a hand as the sword pieced together in his grip.
"We learn to adapt." Reisi says as he brings his glasses back to his eyes.
Daichi scoffs. "You learned from her."
"I did." He nods and remembers the time when she was the one who taught him how to maximize the rest of his abilities.
"And you're still going to arrest her."
Reisi smirks. "I'm going to offer her a position by my side."
Daichi is not the least pleased by the statement, looking blank-faced as he says, "And she'll accept."
"She'll have no other choice." But both he and Daichi know that it was incredulous, she would never actually lower herself to someone else's ranks, but Reisi believed in it nonetheless. She's getting desperate.
"She'll have me." Daichi says before stomping his free foot hard on the ground, sending several tremors through the ground, as well as several electric bolts. The trap Reisi set is cracking little by little.
Reisi raises his blade in preparation for an attack. He could feel Daichi's electric aura rip through the air, the sight of his Damocles Sword from the holes in the roof is enough proof for him to take extra caution in his next movements.
He hears Daichi growl before stomping a final time, the intensity of his power concentrated on the ground beneath him, rather than the ground around him. A great burst of electricity escapes Daichi as the concrete beneath him breaks.
There were very few times where Reisi was caught off-guard, but when Daichi manages to break through the trap and even the floor, he lets his eyes widen and his grip on the blade loosen, but he merely watches as the floor begins to cave in on itself, watches as Kazesōsha falls into the rubble with Daichi.
"You aren't trying to kill her, are you?" Reisi comments as he walks away from the rubble. The very area Daichi broke through was where Mayonaka Akari was, according to his tracking device.
He sighs. He best find a way to either arrest both of them, or save himself if what Akari says is true. That she is actually holding a bomb.
/
"New King?" Saruhiko is not the least impressed by this man's pronouncement.
"Yes, and this fight is the first on my agenda."
"To cause chaos?" And neither is Usagi.
He sends her a quick glare before unsheathing his own blade, "To stop reckless gangs like you from ever battling against equally reckless police."
"Sorry," Usagi smirks, "but reckless is my middle name."
She jumps high and sends several fire balls towards him, and Saruhiko takes it that it's his cue to send several aura blades, and the combination of Blue and Red aura is something Nagare hasn't experienced before, and he is caught off-guard.
"Think you're the only one?" Saruhiko smirks as Usagi lands.
Usagi scoffs, setting her fists aflame as she says nonchalantly, "I'd say we make a pretty good team, four-eyes."
"Thanks, but I'd rather work alone." He jumps back before throwing the daggers he's kept in on of his pockets.
Nagare deflects all of them around him. But Saruhiko's smirk grows even wider and the daggers start spouting flames. Nagare has caught himself in a trap and jumps before the fires could actually start burning him.
Usagi's shock at his dual-Aura overwhelms her jealousy at how he managed to catch the man off-guard. "Red Aura? You're-"
"I am, and he hates me because of that." He replies coolly as he throws another set of daggers towards Nagare, this time setting them aflame as they spin around him.
But Nagare sees through this immediately, and sends a burst of electricity from his body that drop the daggers to the ground. But he doesn't see Usagi from behind him, and evades the flaming kick she sends him almost too late. The edge of his uniform is singed and Usagi takes this as a silent victory.
The smirk Usagi sends Saruhiko is replied with an uninterested scoff.
"Ah, so both of you are wielders of the Red Aura?" Nagare stands slowly, taking caution that he is caught in between the two teenagers.
"One who weilds both the Red and the Blue Aura and another who is interestingly still-"
Usagi attacks him before he could continue, sending several waves of fire to his back.
"Kagome Hikaru." Nagare raises his hand a sends an electric blade that cuts through the fire. "Why the sudden need to hide your identity?"
Usagi grits her teeth. If this man truly knows who she is, then as Akari used to say, People who know too much as better off dead than quiet.
Nagare turns to her fully, "Come now, show me what the Red Aura is truly capable of if given to one such as you."
He has lost interest in the boy, for now.
"One such as me?" Usagi grins, clenching her fists as she feels a rush run through her body. She positions herself in her favorite stance, the one where she runs and jumps high in the air before delivering the fatal blow to the head.
He nods, and whispers maliciously, "Yes, the so-called weapon Mayonaka Akari has kept for so long."
The moment his sentence finishes, her focus breaks and she is rendered immobile.
/
Akari knows that the fight between Daichi and Reisi, would result in the building collapsing, but she never imagined that Daichi would break through the concrete floor without Reisi.
"Daichi." She ignores the tremble of her own voice at the sight of a heaving (and obviously emotional) Daichi.
"Don't you dare run, Akari!" He lunges for her and is too quick for her to evade the blow. She forces herself to take the blow with eyes open.
But he doesn't hit her.
Instead, he wraps his arms around her waist and around her thighs, crying into her stomach as they fall to the ground.
It's an intimately compromising position that makes her feel too warm and too soft to push or pull away.
She can feel his tears leave damp marks on her shirt. She adjusts herself to a more comfortable position and pats the back of his head, "You kept me waiting. Let me up."
He doesn't. Instead, he just holds her tighter. She looks to the rubble that came with him and sees Kazesōsha standing distinct, the glimmer of the blade a reminder of who Daichi is now.
"Tell me." He sounds against her, "Tell me everything that you haven't told me."
"Now?" She blurts out, the situation highly inappropriate for such a conversation.
"Why were you with the Colorless King?"
She sighs. "Let me up, Daichi."
"Not until you tell me!" And he truly is faster than she anticipated, his hands now pinning her arms to her sides as he says, eyes fierce and electric aura radiating, "Two years ago, the Colorless King was murdered, did you have something to do with it?"
The electricity running across his hands to her skin tingles and she says weakly, "It hurts, Daichi."
He loosens his grip on her a little and apologizes, "I'm sorry." Before he stands up and watches her as she stands on her own, dusts herself off.
"Daichi-" Akari says when he grips on her wrist.
"Don't run." He says lowly.
She scoffs. The rubble has blocked off her only exit. Unless, she looks up, she couldn't possibly fly out the hole, can she?
She pulls her arm out of his grip, saying, "I didn't do it."
She is standing about half an arm's length away from him now, and has her back turned to him. He cannot see her expression when he asks, "The conspiracy against the Silver King, was that true?"
She breathes heavily and lets her shoulders roll along with it, "Yes."
She can't see Daichi's face either, and she doesn't imagine his expression when he says, "What did you do?"
She clenches and unclenches her fists before she answers, "I was a medium. That's all I was."
"A medium for what?"
There is a pause. She doesn't know how to answer. He doesn't know what to ask next. But she tells him something before he could do the same,
"A medium for the Colorless King to posses the Silver King."
"Why did you do it, Akari?" He knows that she wants no business with any of the Kings, but takes it as the Colorless King's goals to be the same as hers.
"Because I needed the money, and I needed the Silver King dead." She said this because it was true, she was paid in top dollar to kill a man she has only heard of, and this man was the only thing between her and her dreams of world without fear. She had to kill him.
"Dead?" Daichi's breath catches in his throat.
Alas, the existence of the Kings proved that she had failed.
"Here." She turns around, a box in her extended hand, "A deal's a deal. You got here first."
He picks it up and doesn't open it; the weightlessness suggesting an empty space. "What's this?"
She sighs as if something heavy was lifted from her back. "It's what we were looking for. It's the bomb."
He opens it and sees a clear, crystalline ball with a brightly lit center. "No." He is in too much shock because this shouldn't be with he. This shouldn't even exist.
"Do you remember that blueprint for an anti-Dresden weapon?"
He looks up from the orb, and sees how she reacts so blankly. "The blade?" He refrains from calling it by its real name, Kotowari, as it was the Colorless King's favored sword, crafted from the found pieces of the Dresden Slate. It was a dangerous weapon and it enabled the Colorless King to be something to be feared by the rest of them.
"They're made of the same thing, but this one is far more potent."
How she knows this, baffles him, but the look on her face suggests that she received her information from someone else.
/
When the Colorless King escaped Mayonaka Akari's body, Isana Yashiro's identity was not transferred to her.
"You have done me a great deed, Mayonaka. I shall find it in me to repay you someday." Yashiro, whose voice was that of the Colorless King's, told her tired, heaving form. She had been carrying the fox spirit for nearly a month and it drained her.
"I tell you, I don't work for Kings." She replies weakly.
The fox smirks in Yashiro's body. "For now, I shall leave you with the Silver King's gift. It seems he didn't intend to give it to you in the first place." He says, hearing the real Yashiro's muted pleas and struggle to be in control of his body.
"Goodbye, fox." She smiles.
"Until we meet again, Mayonaka."
He opens the parasol and leaves her staring at the box.
/
When she regains most of her energy, she also regains part of her audacity to allow herself to come knocking on the Gold King's door.
The elevator ride to the 64th floor was uneventful. She honestly thought that the Gold King's men would automatically track her down and take the box from her, but nothing came. She was alone on the non-stop elevator ride, admiring the lights of the city as she rose higher and higher. She grips the gun in her hand when the elevator stops and the doors open.
When she sees the silhouette of the Gold King's back against the lights og the city, she raises the gun to his head, saying, "You're the Silver King's right-hand man."
He answers almost immediately, his voice loud and booming, a reflection of his true power, "And you are no longer being possessed by the Colorless King, lower your gun."
She stills herself, swallowing her fear, before she smirks and decided to test the true strength of the Gold King. She fires her gun thrice, but when the bullets were about to pierce him, bright yellow orbs appeared around the bullets and absorbed them. She lowered her arm for a second-
bang, bang, bang!
Her shriek was louder and higher than she thought.
Three portals were around her, mirroring the portals near him, and the bullets she shot flew past her from behind. "Of course," she thinks as the bullets continue moving in and out of the mirrored portals, "Cosmic forces."
He doesn't even move, and the portals around both of them move, and before she could even move, the bullets shoot towards her-
She whimpers for what she thinks is maybe the third, and last, time in her life.
"You are Mayonaka Akari." He voice makes her eyes shoot open to stare at the tip of the bullet. She jumps back, gasping audibly, and immediately regrets testing him. The three bullets were about to plunge into her left eye, her left wrist, and her right lung if he didn't stop them.
But she shouldn't be so afraid now, if he wanted to kill her, if he was ordered to kill her, he would already have, so she musters up her courage and says cockily, "I see that my reputation has reached even the Gold King."
"You are looking for answers." He turns around and his old age makes her feel safer, if only by a little bit, "Sit." he says as he turns his back to her once more.
She takes her time in doing so, looking around the lavishly decorated room. Colors of red, black, and gold make her feel like an empress in Azuchi Castle, and motifs of rabbits, peacocks, and dragons make her feel underdressed in her hot-pink shirt, dark green shorts, and electric blue sneakers.
She takes a seat on the stiff-back sofa, refusing to relax as she places the box on the coffee table.
"This was a gift from the Silver King."
"Then a simple 'thank you' would suffice."
She bites her lips into a thin line, contemplating on how to converse with him, "He told me that it would be of use to me in the future."
He coughs. "Then only he can answer that."
She suggests, "You know what this is."
"I do, but I cannot tell you."
"Tell me what this is." She presses.
He chuckles, which catches her off-guard, cranes his neck to look at her, "I think you'd rather find out for yourself."
She doesn't want to, so she says, "Tell me."
He faces her then, walking to the sofa opposite her and taking a seat.
"Those are quite interesting bullets." He comments.
Both of them know that he isn't referring to the ones she shot.
She swallows a hard gulp and pulls her shirt up slightly to retrieve something from the pouch on her belt.
It was a bullet, held in between her thumb and index finger so that the light glints off the bullet's etched markings. "Made especially to combat the Kings' aura. They're expensive, but useful." She forgets to add that it was also about to be placed in her gun instead of the regular bullets.
She has spent too much money on these, she thinks, as she puts down the bullet on the table.
"And that is why you choose to stay in the Silver Trade." He picks up a cup of tea from the set on the table and drinks to her expression of shock.
All that she has known about the powers of the Gold King diminishes and she is nervous. "Stop reading me, and read this instead."
She removes the box's cover and sees the orb emit the glow of all the colors of the Kings.
He lowers the cup, glances at the orb and merely says, "I will not tell you what you already know."
His answers rile her, and she is tempted to place the bullet on the table in her gun and shoot him dead.
"You haven't tested the bullets on the Kings, have you?" He asks her and she mentally scolds herself.
"There is no need to blame yourself, you need practice after all."
The way he says that makes her face flush in anger, all the more when he looks at her expectantly, as if he is waiting for her to fail.
"I need to know if these are the real things, after all." She copies his tone mockingly and is quick to reload the gun, and is even quicker to aim it at his head.
"If you are to go against Kings, do not hesitate." He tells her, and she is angered even more.
She pulls the trigger and there is a silence and there is a sudden burst of light, and before she knows it, she is being thrown outside the window. She thinks she is moving in slow motion and there is no sound and there is no pain when her back breaks through the window. She looks at him standing there with his hands behind his back, a look of disappointed on his face.
And because her gun in still in her hands, she shoots at him until she runs out. She lets go of the gun, and falls. She was foolish to draw a gun at a King, and she is dead for even trying to kill one.
But when she wakes up in her own room, facedown on her carpet, she remembers nothing of the encounter.
/
Meanwhile, the Gold King converses with the Silver King as he puzzles the broken pieces of his window back together. To hold the pieces of glass in suspension, as well as allow her to fall long enough for her to lose consciousness was tiresome. He even snuck her into her own apartment and erased her memory, which was something he'd done in times that are far and few.
He asks Adolf, "Why give it to her?"
Adolf picks up the box and eyes it curiously. "She wants power that she isn't capable of."
"That will bring about your own destruction, Adolf." He knows this, they both do.
He hums contentedly, closing his eyes as he creates a bubble around the box. "And I shall finally have my peace."
The bubble lifts the box from his hands and flies out before the window fixes piecing itself together.
They both watch it disappear into the sky.
"But at what cost?"
Adolf knows not the answer to the question.
/
She plucks the orb from his hand, and the box drops to the floor. She smiles at how good the orb feels in her palm.
Daichi's afraid of her smile. "What are you planning to do, Akari?"
"I don't know yet, but with this we could be-"
"We?" He gasps. She couldn't still be hooked on their childhood dreams, could she? "Akari, you don't know what this could do."
"When you became King, did you know what to do?"
"No-"
"No! But you had a set destiny; the Dresden Slate gave you this destiny, this destiny that you didn't even want!" She sounded almost hysterical.
"But it is my destiny nonetheless." He argued.
She tightens her grip at the orb. "You wanted to surpass your father."
"I have." His eyes narrow at her.
"No." She meets his intense gaze with her own, and she doesn't falter when she says, "You're becoming like him, the tyrant, the despised, the traitor." She spits out.
"What would you have done? You don't know what it's like to live by a set destiny." They both notice how his voice is getting louder, his frustration becoming more and more evident. "You don't know when you need to go and where you have to be." He grips at her shoulders, stating, "You are lost and alone. You always have been."
She doesn't let his words take her. She doesn't allow herself to show any sign of weakness. She doesn't let herself see how he is visibly pleading her to stop.
"You are a coward."
Her cold response makes him want to crush her beneath his grip, to shake some sense into her already senseless world. He pleads with her, his throat going dry, "And what does that make you? Some kind of hero? Protector of the broken? Savior of the weak?"
But she is still unfazed and unmoved.
"It makes me believe that people like me stand a chance against the odds."
He lowers his eyes and lifts his hands from her shoulders. "What do you plan on doing with that?"
"I'm going to kill Adolf Weissman, and I'm going to free you from this destiny." Her voice sounds determined, ambitious, reminding him of how he used to be when he became King. "I'm going to free everyone."
Still, he tries to reason with her, practically kneeling in front of her as a sign of surrender, "But you don't know-"
"I'm going to take the chance!" She shouts, and surprises him with the barrel of the gun pressed against his forehead when he looks up. He failed to notice that she kept the gun behind her, tucked in her pants, and he blames himself for letting her have the upper hand.
But she is visibly scared at the idea of murdering her friend, but she isn't at all afraid of the idea of killing those who stand in her way.
"If you're going to stand, at least stand by me like before." She says, voice shaking along with her hand.
He frowns at her, at what she's become. "I'm not going to let you murder the Silver King." He says softly.
But the feigned tenderness of his voice is broken when he shoves past her and ignores the sound of the gun going off as he runs to grab Kazesōsha from the rubble. The feeling of the blade in his hand makes him believe that he has a greater chance of convincing her.
But she is relentless, the gun still aimed at him as she calls out, "Daichi."
"I'm your friend." He says, but his stance says otherwise.
She's seen this stance before, the stance Daichi does when he's about to kill. She smiles to herself, at the idea that she'd be able to witness Daichi's killing stance firsthand.
/
Hisui Nagare looks at Usagi with a dangerous smirk and charges, delivering a quick blow that sends her flying-
If it wasn't for the boy standing between him and her, using the flat expanse of his blade to take most of the blow. Saruhiko struggles to maintain his balance.
"Oi! What are you doing?" He screams at her, and she snaps out of her blank thoughts.
"Nothing." She mutters, a little embarrassed and a little frustrated, "Now move!" She takes his opportunity to use him as leverage, placing her hands on his shoulders and she pulls herself up, rising above both of their heads and aiming a flaming foot against Nagare's head that causes him to recoil and fall to the ground.
Saruhiko falls to the ground as well, surprised by Usagi's sudden move.
"What was that for?" He calls out and is ignored by her.
She stands with one heavy foot on Nagare's chest, "Do you know what I am, sir?"
"A weapon and nothing else." He spits out and tries to stand, but she stops him.
"Wrong." She lifts her foot and delivers a swift stomp that makes him cough out his own blood.
She continues stomping on his chest before Saruhiko forcibly pulls her away, hands shaking at the fear of her violence. And when she looks at him, her face of anger and bloodlust is reflected in his fearful eyes.
She breaks out of her state and punches him in the gut.
"I had him." She mutters.
"You don't have to kill him." Saruhiko manages through his pained gasps.
And Usagi wonders what Akari would have said instead.
/
"Friends don't stand against other friends." She says as she grips hard on both the gun and the orb. The audible clicking of the bullet establishes the tense atmosphere between them.
"You don't know what that can do." He tries.
"I'm going to take the chance!"
She shoots twice, and he deflects both of them, but fails to dodge Akari's heavy kick to his side.
"You know I can't kill you, Daichi." She comments weakly as she manages to land the gun to his arm, the still-hot barrel against his skin makes him wince. She continues, "And you don't want to kill me."
He pulls back and she shoots at his feet and he barely has time to dodge, forgetting how good Akari is at shooting at point-blank range.
"If you want to stop me, then fight me." She says as she places the gun and the orb to her feet. "Safe word's 'sorry.' If you win, you get the orb."
He stares as she moves to position herself in a defensive stance. He thinks she's actually going to do it, to do a clean fight. He removes his scabbard and sheathes Kazesōsha, before placing it back to the rubble.
"And if you win?" He mirrors her stance.
"You stand by me, just like before. Fair?" The way she says this without a mischievous smirk or a confident grin makes him uneasy.
"Fair." He says as he aims a fist to her chest, which she counters by crouching and delivering an upward hook.
He takes in her punch before aiming a kick to her side. She takes it, and is sent tumbling. He resists the urge to apologize, because she honestly could have chosen a better word, but-
She lands a heavy kick to his head and his thoughts stop, and he falls.
He rolls around and pulls her by the feet, sending her down with him. She kicks at his head and his shoulders, but he evades them. He stands up and she pulls herself quickly, using her momentum to deliver and forward roll that ends in her kicking his stomach.
He crouches and grips at his abdomen, tasting blood in his mouth as he coughs. He backs away and when he straightens up, he sees her clutching and unsheathed Kazesōsha in one hand and the orb in another.
"You forgot that I never play fair, Daichi."
His face falls, of course he hasn't forgotten, and so he replies, "Of course I haven't, it gives me permission to do this."
His smirk matches hers before he is lightning-fast in delivering an electric blow to her stomach.
She coughs out blood and the sword clatters to the floor. Her knees buckle and her weight is transferred unwillingly to the ground. The pained sound that escapes her mouth makes him wince.
"I should have known, Daichi." She smiles weakly as her arm clutches around herself. He's knocked the air out of her. That blow could have broken bone.
He sighs, thinks she's given up, offers a hand of a friend, "Give me the bomb, Akari."
She doesn't answer, doesn't give him a grin, and instead looks down, as if already dead. Had he punched her too hard? Had she already given up? He sighs to himself and waits.
He might be King, but he's only human.
Sometimes he lets himself relax.
"Where's the bomb, Akari?" He repeats.
Sometimes, people take advantage of him.
Sometimes, Akari's aware of his weaknesses, and proves this moment to be one. She is within arm's reach of the gun, and decides to take action.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Three bullets fly past him, but one manages to slice through the sleeve and skin of his arm.
"Shit!" He clutches his shoulder and closes his eyes tightly, the hot rush of pain flooding into his body.
"Since when have we ever played fair?" He hears her say.
When he cracks one eye open, he sees the orb in her hand and the gun raised to it.
She doesn't look up.
The gun clicks.
No! He lunges forward.
The last bullet is loaded.
She smirks.
"I win."
"Akari!"
BANG!
The orb shatters.
She falls limp against him. She is not breathing.
The pieces of the orb start to glow a bright, hot light. It is burning to the touch.
She didn't lie when she said it was a bomb.
He closes his eyes, readies himself for the searing-hot fire to come around them.
"I always win." She would say.
And suddenly it is brighter than any sun he was ever saw, hotter than any fire he has ever felt.
He accepts defeat at the hand of the friend he once knew.
/
A/N: And there you have it. It's been a blast (haha) writing the longest fanfic I've ever written as of now. It was fun while it lasted.
BONUS! You have the option to read on, or stop right here.
Anyways, review?
/
Epilogue
Reisi witnesses the explosion from a SCEPTER4 helicopter that was sent to retrieve him. He wasn't able to find a way to arrest both Daichi and Akari, but he supposes arresting the dead would be pointless. Still, he feels as if he could have dome something else other than to witness the two fight for a mere object that turns out to be an actual bomb.
"You're injured, captain." It's Seri's voice on the helicopter's radio.
"I tell you, I am perfectly fine, Awashima-kun." He thanks how she isn't physically near him to see his tired form.
"Your statistics say otherwise." The smugness in her voice is evident, and he could imagine her smirk knowingly at him.
He frowns.
He hears Seri sigh before asking, "What of Osamu Daichi, captain?"
"His Damocles Sword is nowhere in sight."
It was an impossible feat to imagine, that a Damocles Sword would disappear into thin air, unless-
Seri takes it that Osamu Daichi was been slain, and decides to ask him, albeit quite hesitant, "And of Mayonaka Akari?"
"List her down as MIA." He tells her too quickly, she thinks.
"Of course."
Reisi sighs and lets himself sink into the seat. He is going to have to fix all of this.
/
MASANORI witnesses the explosion as well, but in a more intimate manner.
Usagi watches as Nagare is slow to stand, clutching his chest, but only to fall back on the ground as a green electric bolt escapes him and flies to the air.
She starts worrying when he doesn't move. "Oi. Don't tell me you're-"
Saruhiko comments, "He's lost his power."
"No!" She hears the muffled cry of the man when he looks at his clenching and unclenching fist, as if something had slipped through his fingers.
"It's either his King's dead, or the Damocles Sword was stolen." Saruhiko continues.
"Stolen?"
He sounds almost disinterested in the subject, "If you're fast enough, you can steal a dead King's power."
She turns to Nagare, and watches him stand up. "So you ain't the new King, huh?"
"I'll remember you. Both of you." He says before he starts running, half-tripping on his own feet before a helicopter flies over and descends a ladder to him.
"A flair for the dramatic, I see." She hums as she watches the helicopter pull him up.
Saruhiko places a hand on her shoulder before she can do anything else, says, "Don't pursue him."
She grunts, "What the hell-why not?"
"A straggler isn't worth it."
And they watch as they, SCEPTER4, HOMURA, and PHOENIX pick each other up and move on.
/
Two days later.
Yasumaru bears the pain of losing two people at the same time. It was bad enough for him to know after SCEPTER4, but it felt even worse when he came to their gravestones. Not even a mere mention of their feats were engraved on the marble. But it was a pretty good thing that Daichi and Akari were buried in separate places, Daichi in his family mausoleum and Akari in a modern tower. It was also good that whoever buried Akari gave her an entire room to herself.
"So you're dead." He tells the picture of Akari hanging above the tomb. It's a simple picture of herself in a bridal gown that makes it look like as if he's mourning the loss of his wife. He blushes at the idea.
"And Daichi is, too." He looks down at her tomb, black marble just like how she wanted before.
He sighs and places his hand on the cold marble. "What's someone like me to do?"
He closes his eyes and silently wishes for her to appear behind him, laughing and smirking, and all bright and happy.
"Commander." But his vision is interrupted when a voice comes up in his headset, "SCEPTER4 is arriving."
"Of course, they are." He sounds displeased with the entire investigation about their deaths, "They have to fix her mess, as always."
"We could divert them for you."
"No. I guess I'll just come visit her some other time." He starts walking away.
"Condolences, commander." The voice tires to sound conforting, they know how vulnerable Yasumaru is when he's emotional.
But he doesn't get too caught up in his emotions, instead, he chuckles, "She doesn't want pity, and neither does he."
He gives a final glance at Akari's picture when he opens the door, "Thank you, Akari, Daichi. I'll catch up with you guys later, much later. I have a clan to rule and a Hisui Nagare to catch."
/
Reisi buys a bouquet of lilies and daisies and roses because he doesn't know what fits. It looks like a disaster, and it's for her.
"Doesn't she like flowers, captain?" Seri is laughing at him in the phone call.
And he overhears someone else's voice from the other end;
"Who's he buying flowers for?"
"Your favorite customer." He hears Seri say.
"Tell him that I share my condolences."
"You should visit her, maybe she's still alive and is just waiting for the right person to come and find her." Seri laughs and he could almost recognize the other person with her.
"Captain?"
He looks at the bouquet and replies, "She does."
"Then why don't you buy her a bouquet?"
He feels ashamed for holding a bouquet that could pass for a florist's worst nightmare.
"I don't know what she likes." He blurts out.
And Seri is astonished at how quick her captain can transformed into a blushing teenager, she sighs, and suggests, "Buy something that reminds you of her."
And when Reisi steps out of the train, he throws the bouquet into the nearest trashcan and considers going to nearest travel agency.
When he visits Akari's tomb, he slides an envelope into one of the cracks. "You said you wanted a ticket for a fresh start, here it is."
It was a one-way ticket to Amsterdam.
/
Usagi breaks Akari's tombstone, but it wasn't intentional. It was an accident, really.
"You fucking idiot." She cries out and thanks the solitude (and apparent soundproof) of the place.
"You went ahead and let yourself die. Just like that."
She bangs her fist on the black marble of her tomb.
"I thought you were immortal."
So much that the marble cracks under the impact of her blows.
"That even a King can't kill you."
She cries for what she thinks is the longest time, but she pulls herself together quickly. She wipes her tears on the back of her hands, and laughs when she notices the obvious crack on the marble.
"Looks like you're the only one capable of that privilege."
When she walks away, she realizes that she has been pulling her weight away from Akari.
"Now it's just me alone in the world, Akari."
She glances once more at Akari's picture and wishes that she would be on the opposite side of the door when she opens it, smirking and embracing her like a lifeline.
"I don't know what to do."
When she opens the door, she tries not to expect because there is no one to greet her with a wide grin.
/
And Isana Yashiro steps into the Silver King's blimp as both himself and the Colorless King.
"Ah, Isana." Adolf greets the boy, "How goes the search for the remnants of the Dresden Slate?"
He smiles in reply. "I'm working on it, but one of our pieces was stolen and I can't find it."
"It doesn't matter," The taller man pats the other one's head in comfort, "as long as we can retrieve the other pieces before the others do."
"The others?"
Adolf pulls his hand away from Yashiro, saying with a cautious tone, "The Colorless King."
Adolf meets the Colorless King's fox-like grin on Yashiro's face with a cold, unrelenting stare.
/
Three days later.
Yuki looks at Akari's picture hanging over her tomb and comments, "You death will not be be naught, Akari. The Silver Trade sends their condolences."
And when he notices the envelope Reisi's tucked away, "What's this? A ticket to Belgium for her? What a waste of travelling, then."
"That's right." He imagines her saying, as he pockets the envelope.
And when he turns around, he screams.
/
A/N: Mysterious figure ex machina. This is the actual/optional/hypothetical/fake ending. Review?