AN: Cheers for 256 hits everyone! The fortune teller/info broker is an unnamed character from the K canon, but she needed a name, hence Kantilla.

Synchronize.

Dipping her hand into her bag, Anna drew out a red marble. Unassuming tinted glass, but because of her affinity to the color, it allowed her to focus her strain powers. "When I first began visiting bar homra, Mikoto looked at me through this and I was able to see into his heart, his inner world. After that, we were synchronized. I could clearly understand him, and he could understand me just the same."

Reisi listened with apparent interest, and when she held the marble out to him, he received it without protest.

"If you want to adopt me, please look at me through it, and allow me to try to synchronize with you."

"Oh? Well that certainly is a request. Is there anything I should know before you attempt it?"

"I might pass out." Anna warned. "But I won't be harmed."

"Good to know." So saying. Munakata removed his glasses and lifted the marble, holding it before his eye.

Anna lifted her own from her lap, to return the eye contact. Instead of seeing the man before her, her sight showed her Reisi's soul, his world.

Mikoto's heart had been a violent sea of beautiful flowing magma, all heat and scorching red light. A place where Mikoto's feelings and memories had been within reach.

Memories of hospital visits, that put Anna in mind of the center for strains, where she herself had been held captive.

There were also memories of his father, a champion boxer. And of his mother, a woman with dark skin and warm smiles. They had died together in a plane crash.

Of the day Mikoto saw the fire, that caused the crater, from a football field. And later, his taciturn but kind grandfather, taking him on a trip to visit the crater.

Memories of high school, Honami subtly encouraging him to eat more vegetables. His desk by the window in his classroom, and views of blue skies, extending further than even his eyes could see.

Of working nights as hired muscle, receiving paychecks under the table, which he used to maintain a rental room.

Then there was the moment Mikoto became a King. He, Izumo and Tatara had been running from a group of attackers. It had felt like dying, just as had been the case for Anna herself, when she had inherited the Red King's throne.

Reisi's world, by contrast, was the blue sky above. A blue she might not be able to see with her own eyes, but could understand through Reisi's memory. Cool clear air filled her lungs, bringing with it a sense of calm.

Suspended all about Anna, crystals glittered like stars, each one aligned to a grid. These, Anna understood instinctively, represented Reisi's memories.

Reaching out to one, she found herself suspended effortlessly in Reisi's history. There was his working class family, a kind mother and somewhat gruff father with an artist's eye for landscaping. His older brother too had this elusive knack for pruning, he was simple and naive, but friendly and well liked. Anna got the impression of their being a divide between Reisi and his family, not one caused by ill will, but simply by the differing ways they experienced and viewed the world. Anna empathized acutely.

It was a divide that extended to classmates and teachers. So Reisi had sought to expand his world, to seek connections like those he saw on the other side of the divide, but the divide only followed him to high school and university abroad. This awareness of his own isolation, peaked upon his brother's wedding, and soon after the birth of his niece and nephew.

Reisi next decided that if he could understand his own place in the world, maybe things would be different. Then, in the midst of a terror attack on an airliner, Reisi became the Blue King. The feeling had been one of curiosity, and at last he understood what it was he was meant to be, a King. But the divide between himself and others, only grew as a result.

Anna forged on through the sky, discovering the reformation of Scepter 4. And finally, the memory of the day Reisi and Mikoto first spoke. They met at a park and the discussion they shared, set the tone for years to come, even though their underlying feelings were to shift in the near future. Next, she felt Munakata's eagerness and satisfaction, amidst a fight more a dialogue, through which he could express himself for the first time. Mikoto was fully engaged too, there was no divide between them, it was exhilarating. They were angry, loathsome of one another, but they were also communicating on a par, in tune together.

Then she saw the moment Fushimi defected to Scepter 4, it had been dark on an unassuming street, when Mikoto had relinquished Saruhiko to Reisi's care.

A different memory suffused the sky with what felt like frustration and loneliness. It was new years night and Reisi was on his own at an izakaya, with far too much food for just one person to eat in front of him. Most of the others had made their excuses during the day, and Fushimi had made his escape part way through the meal. So instead, Reisi ventured out to a familiar sake bar. Mikoto was already there, and the two of them had drunk bourbon until they couldn't walk straight. They welcomed the new year, watching the stars from a helipad far above the city. Reisi's heart had been bursting with love for his companion, but he had excused it as a side effect of the drink and the poor start to the celebrations.

Too soon it was December of 2012. Reisi showed Mikoto to his office, after apprehending him in accordance with protocol 120. The pretense for the moment's privacy, was reading Mikoto his rights. But really, Mikoto had just wished to remove his jacket. Compelled to do the little he could to make the other man more comfortable, Reisi unshackled him and helped him out of the bulky item of clothing. While Reisi was busy replacing the shackles, Mikoto turned his head to study him and twisted his body slightly intending to kiss Reisi. But Reisi placed a hand on the back of Mikoto's neck to stop him. Mikoto was his prisoner, it wasn't right, no matter how performative Mikoto's incarceration was. Mikoto merely smiled and told Reisi that he was ready for a sleep, so he was taken to his cell.

Then Anna saw the moment she had only heard Reisi make mention of. The night Reisi and Mikoto talked, just the two of them, during the school island incident. He had pleaded with Mikoto not to do anything that would endanger his own life, nothing had deterred Mikoto, nothing could have. They were both men of action, their approaching battle would decide things. And at last, that terrible moment Reisi had taken it into his own hands, to end the life of the man he loved, according to Mikoto's wish. Anna had seen this before, through her link with Mikoto, and felt that link severed. This second time was just as awful, there was room for no other feeling, save total and complete desolation. She hurried away from that memory.

Frenetic days followed, Reisi working himself to the point of exhaustion, often falling asleep in his office. Amid the work, was only one moment of respite under a blooming cherry blossom, surrounded by his clansmen.

Eventually Anna came upon her own kidnapping by the Green clan, and Reisi's anxiety associated with that memory. Then arrived the pride he felt, upon her awakening as the Red King, it mingled with a protective impulse.

Soon, Reisi was spending most waking hours in front of the Dresden slate. Willing the slate to make right what had gone wrong, to bring Mikoto back to him and spear Anna the Red King's crown, to put in order what he had failed to. Those days he spent in deepest resentment, the Silver King had sacrificed Mikoto, to destroy the threat that was the Colorless King. But only Weismann had returned from death.

She saw Reisi and herself at bar Homra, after the slate was taken by the Green clan. The cigarettes he smoked were Blue Sparks.

Next. A memory of the Grey King, who not only bested Reisi, but who reflected back at Reisi, a man who had come to a stop in his path as a result of tragedy. Something Reisi was struggling with himself, the Grey King presented an image of what he might become. In the end though, Reisi had relinquished the slate, when Anna summoned her King's powers to open a path for the slate to be broken. In that moment, he too had seen Mikoto with her, with them both.

It was after this, Anna saw Reisi return to bar homra, on an occasion when she herself had been out. The atmosphere this second time was very different, Reisi's smile was not wholly happy, but it was no longer false. And, she thought she heard Mikoto and Tatara's voices, under Reisi and Izumo's, for just a moment?

The last thing Anna glimpsed from Reisi's heart, was a resolution, Scepter 4 would to be dissolved. With Scepter 4 gone, a domino effect set in motion, powerful people and agencies lined up to fall. The plan was a risky one.

Anna returned to herself, bit by bit. She heard her own shuddering breaths each time she drew in air, she tasted her own dry mouth and a hint of berry tea, red light filtered through her closed eyelids And her face was wet with tears. Tears which she felt Reisi brushing gently, with his cravat she discovered upon opening her eyes.

He smiled softly back at her from behind his glasses, he knew she was ok, they were synced after all.

Standing on shaking legs, Anna wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her face in his shoulder while he patted her hair tenderly.
_

Yata stepped off his board, partway down their local shopping street, in front of Kantilla's shop. Kantilla was a neighbor and ally to Homra, who acted as an information broker, under the guise of fortune telling. She was also a trans and bisexual.

On spotting him, she waved to him from further towards the back of her little place of business. "Come in!" She invited.

So Yata did, rounding the counter and dropping down into a comfy chair, past the velvet drapes. Inside, she had candles burning, and the place was dimly lit, it made him feel lightheaded. It wasn't a bad thing, though there was an esoteric feel about the place admittedly.

"What can I do for you hun?" She asked, bringing a cup of ice tea to the table for them both, and making herself comfy in the seat opposite him.

Yata battled for an answer. He had come here because he couldn't go to Kusanagi, Kamamoto, or any of the others. They were his chosen family, sure, and it wasnt that he thought they would react badly to the thing he was trying to work out, if they knew. But, what if he was wrong and freaking out for no reason, what if they teased him? Even good naturedly, it would be too much to bear. So he come to Kantilla.

"I need to talk to someone. It's-" He stalled, his words sticking on his tongue.

"It seems serious."

"It's personal."

"Ah. Personal, that could only be love trouble with you, Yata."

That was true. His family was nondescript. Homra was running smoothly as far as anyone knew, despite Anna's pending adoption. And his work at this or that izakaya, was never anything to shout about. "I feel like I'm getting consecutively gut punched, and I gotta talk to someone who- I don't know, isn't straight?"

"One of those days huh?"

"Yeah, first Kusanagi told me some things, and then-"

Kantilla cut in. "About Mikoto?"