AN: Cheers for 557 hits!
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention it in my last authors note. This and the previous chapter more or less overlap with K Missing Kings, but from the perspective of those in the dream.
Burden.
The day following, seesawed between bright sunshine, and bouts of heavy cloud coverage.
Hibana was almost done with tummy time. And Mikoto was finishing up a session of expressing, by one of bar homra's lower floor windows facing the back lot. When a chill he hadn't felt since he was 18, ran through him, that of autumn air against his skin.
Unbidden, red points of light began leaving his body, drifting in the air out the window, past the buildings and down the street. Just a few at first, then many, taking heat and power with them.
Following them with his eyes, Mikoto saw that the lights coalesced around Mihashira tower.
"Tatara." He required the attention of the room's last occupant, currently getting little Hibana comfy in their bounce seat. "Anna's about to awaken." He forewarned, while he rearranged his tshirt.
Sacrificing his bracelet to Hibana's gummy bite. Tatara looked to the window, seeing the red light for himself. A moment later, his Homra insignia began to glow through the left shoulder of his shirt, the light leaving it and rising up through the ceiling. Shifting his eyes to Mikoto he decided. "I'll head up stares, in case she wishes to visit us, I think that's the most likely place. You watch over Hibana until then." Leaving his post by the bounce seat, he climbed the stairs.
screwing the lid on to the bottle of EBM, and setting it on the windowsill. Mikoto wandered over and crouched before his baby, giving the crunchy star on the mobile a nudge to get Hibana's attention.
Anna, Mikoto missed her. His gentle, kind, courageous daughter. Only eleven years old, and destiny certainly wasn't showing her any mercy. Her affinity to his red, and their having synced, meant she was almost definitely the next Red King. Homra had better support her. And Munakata? Mikoto was trusting him to see her through this alive somehow. Anna couldn't meet the same fate as the Red Kings before her. "Break some rules Munakata. This time things have to be different."
Soft conversation, to distant to be made out from the neighboring room, reached Mikoto via the baby monitor, drawing him back to the present.
Returning his attention to his youngest, he told them. "I'm gonna be upstairs for a minute, while your big sister visits. You'll meet her someday, but she's got a lot of living to do first." Tapping the lion rattle, he stood and made for the stairs that lead to Anna's room. Where he could hear Anna and Tatara talking.
Closing her eyes, and resting her young face in the palm of Mikoto's hand, Anna was gone back to the side of the waking in a wash of light.
Still crouching, Mikoto allowed his arm to drop against his thigh, and lowered his head, his own eyes closing. The last of his King's power burning out of him, the Red was Anna's now.
"You ok?" Tatara asked from the chair across the other side of the room.
Before Mikoto could give any answer, little Hibana could be heard crying out restlessly from the floor below.
Addressing Hibana. "Yeah I hear you wriggly, it's lunch time." Lifting his head, and rising to his full height. Mikoto next asked of his friend. "Tatara, could you? The bottle's on the windowsill."
"Sure!" Tatara agreed. Nudging Mikoto's shoulder with a fist, on his way past and back down stares.
Alone on the floor, Mikoto wandered over to a window with a view of Mihashira tower, he had to see this through, even if he couldn't do anything more for Anna.
Awakening as a King tended, as far as Mikoto was aware, to happen under life and death circumstances. That meant Anna was probably fighting for survival and likely that of others too, all while she had the power of the Red King to cope with.
And there it was, bursting from the mirage field, on to the worlds of both the waking and the dream. Anna's Red Damocles, burning bright. But this time, the beast that accompanied the Red Damocles not only manifested, it took on a different form. Not a lion like it had been for Mikoto, the Red King's power now reflected Anna's soul as a phoenix.
Mikoto's grip on the windowsill tightened without his being aware of it.
The great bird soared from the tower, to lap the Damocles, until it at last dissipated. Anna had come out the victor, her will caging the beast within herself.
The sound of wood splintering drew Mikoto's attention to the windowsill, and he winced. He was no handyman, but he was going to have to fix that he supposed.
The sound of footsteps resonated in the quiet. Soon Tatara, with a sleeping Hibana in his arms, was by Mikoto's shoulder. "She did it." Tatara spoke aloud to no one in particular. "Held my breath the whole time though." He sought Mikoto's eyes.
"Fight's not over." Mikoto pointed out.
While Hibana stirred in their sleep. Mikoto and Tatara watched on, as green energy in the form of electricity, wreathed the Red Damocles. Then from points across the city too numerous to count, yet more Green light shot upwards, gathering above the tower, coalescing as a globe of plasma.
"That must be the Green King's doing." Tatara breathed, hardly daring to blink.
Mikoto had never felt so powerless. But he told himself Anna could face this, she was already shouldering the Red King's powers at a much younger age than he himself had been, next to that she was practiced at managing her strain powers. And if anything happened, Homra and Munakata were there in the waking.
As this thought went through his head, the Green Kings lightning jutsu, struck with city shaking vehemence. But rather than tearing apart the tower and the surrounding district, it met with Anna's Red aura.
Beside Mikoto, Tatara rose up on to his tiptoes, face a mixture of elation and anxiety. Mirroring Mikoto's own feelings.
Wave after wave poured down from the sphere of Green plasma, rocking Anna's efforts to shield everyone who might be present.
Then at last, her shield broke, and thought it rebuffed the lightning temporarily. The plasma source wasn't exhausted.
Mikoto's skin was a wash with a sensation like pins and needles. But he refused to look away.
A last Green bolt struck. But this time It wasn't stopped by Red, instead halted in its tracks by a Blue aura. And there in the center, Reisi's Damocles manifested.
The lightning bolt was forced back by Munakata's crystalline powers forming a column, and dispelled in deft fashion. The Green Kings plasma source not only rebuffed but destroyed. In its place, the sky was a cascade of blue lights, descending like snow.
Mikoto breathed out unsteadily, his heart resuming a normal pace, coming down from the staccato it had been moving at.
Beside him, Tatara was practically buzzing, and looked ready to jump out of his shoes. So Mikoto took Hibana. While, Tatara did in fact, run a victory lap around the room.
"You know how to pick your man." Tatara teased, upon reaching the window again.
Ignoring that comment, as well as the effect it had on his heart. Mikoto opened the window, and extended a hand, catching one of the thousands of sparks cloaking the city.
It rested in Mikoto's palm. And awake now, Hibana reached out towards it, little fingers clumsily brushing it until the glow seeped into both of their skin.
Turning away from the window at last, Mikoto rested his back against the wall, breathing out all the built up tension in his body. Those in the waking had made it through for now.
"I'll go make us something to eat to celebrate!" Tatara decided, punching his one fist into the palm of his other hand.
Mikoto watched his friend descend the stairs, without comment. Soon enough the sounds of food preparation reached his ears. He would have preferred a drink, but he was still feeding his brat EBM.
Adjusting his hold on Hibana, he sat down on the edge of Anna's bed. And very gently rocked his little one on his knee, coaxing them back to sleep.
The worst had passed for now, but Mikoto couldn't help the disquiet he felt. Having touched Munakata's power, he could sense the burden he himself had entrusted to Munakata.
Turning his eyes back to the sky, to the Blue Damocles radiant even in daylight, dispelling the clouds. Mikoto watched a fracture extend across its surface.
Somehow, someway. Mikoto was going to need to be there for Anna, and for the man he had left behind, when Anna and Munakata fought the Green King for keeps. Mikoto knew that confrontation was fast approaching.
[8th of December 2013]
It was midday. Tatara and Mizuomi bustled about making lunch. And Mikoto lay on the couch, Hibana on his tummy making spit bubbles, while he massaged away their growing pains and listened to the conversation from the kitchen.
"-must have been something on last night, do you think they were celebrating beating the current Green King?" Mizuomi was asking.
"You're referring to the voices, music, and aura's in the bar from the side of the waking?" Tatara's tone held a knowing quality. "That's actually why I suggested you and I stay the night here, with Mikoto and Hibana. You see on the side of the waking, it was Anna's twelfth birthday party!"
"Ah, the girl Mikoto and the rest of you took in, after that horrible business with the center for strains."
"One and the same. Even though she didn't have her sanctum active, I thought we might get some crossover from the occasion, now that she's the Red King and with everyone in the waking gathered together."
Now that there was a new Red King on the waking side, they had all begun to glimpse the aura's of the living red clans folk once more. Mostly at bar homra, but sometimes amid the city crowds too. Tatara had explained for Mikoto, when Mikoto first witnessed it, that the phenomena had only ceased For Tatara and Mizuomi after Mikoto's own death. But now the Red clan had a new King to kindle their previously fading embers.
"Mizuomi." Mikoto lifted his voice.
"Speaketh!" Mizuomi called back.
"Look after Hibana for a bit."
At this Tatara leaned through the door. "Ok, whats up?"
"Going for a walk."