I marched towards the main stretch of Daedalus Bridge. Herds of putrid nightlife enjoyers belted out laughter. The thick of the crowd clung to the club entrances on either side of the strip. Shards of broken bottles crunched beneath my steps.

Noise and light faded as I climbed the bridge's walkway. New Domino's neon pooled in the waters below like spilled gasoline. The flashes and blasts from occupied Duel Lanes flirted with the iridescence dancing on the water's surface.

Crime thrived at night, so I scanned the scarce movement on the footbridge. Headlights and brakelights beamed white and red on the curling roads to my right and left. The blinding colors harkened back to ambulances, to fire, to death.

A gathered group on the sidewalk opposite mine shared videos and attempted skateboard grinds teetering on the railing. The other side plummeted toward the inlet's waves miles below. I may have been a Director of Sector Security. Interfering with natural selection wasn't a battle I cared to fight.

I passed a few individuals. Most perused their cellular devices, others watched passing Turbo Duels, and a handful dared to make eye contact with me.

They consistently broke away.

The idea of the gigantic, bright advertisements plastered on the New Domino side of the footbridge nearly got me to laugh. Firms paid millions for their chance to be seen. The city's denizens were raised to tune them out. Only an idiot would keep their head high on the streets and really, truly look at the adverts.

Thinking the word must have conjured one. The next individual I encountered on the footbridge had their hand resting on the railing, and their wide eyes drank in the flashing screens.

Worst still was the fact I happened to personally know the born and bred idiot before me.

"Orichalcum!" I snapped.

The focus of her eyes shifted to mine. The neon lights bled over her blue irises, shifting sapphiric to opaline. Her bushy brows lifted. She backed away a step, put space between her feet, and scowled.

"Cut the theatrics," I said. "I'm not going to hurt you; I know better than to interfere in your chaotic hellhole of a life. Speaking of which, where were you today? It's the opening of the WRGP matches tomorrow, your team duels day one, and you don't show up for the proverbial red ribbon cutting? Are you too far above the riffraff to attend?"

"To be honest, I hoped to dodge more of your monologues," Rain mumbled, "but heeere we are."

I shouted, "You'd be enlightened to hear any syllable I utter you vegetative-"

She grinned and giggled like a hyena, so I forced myself to stop. My hands remained halfway outstretched palms up, the fingers curled as if resisting to strangle her. Oh, I resisted. Rain shifted up and down between her tiptoes and the balls of her feet. "So? How many speeches did you give? Did you smile for the crowd? That's the only way I'd regret not being there."

"Smile?" I scoffed. "I only smile at meaningful moments, such as-"

She cut in with a gasp. "Kittens dying."

"What? No."

"A devastating tsunami!"

"Absolutely not!"

"Then what does it take to make you smile?" Rain asked. "Should I aim a camera at you? Go through a joke book? Slip on a banana peel?"

I snorted. "None of those are important enough."

"Here I thought the banana peel was a winner." She loosed an overdramatic sigh, and her shoulders slumped. City lights shone on the split ends of her black locks spilling over the collar of her hooded grey jacket. "I don't understand you one bit."

"The feeling is mutual. Who in this hell on Earth actually looks at the blaring ads in the City?"

She peered up through the slices in her thick bangs. The metal of the criminal mark underlining her right eye reflected a passing headlight. Staring was rude, I knew, but I struggled to take my eye off it. She said, "I thought you might be like me."

"I've never been so insulted in my life."

"I didn't-" Her voice shot up a couple of octaves. She cleared her throat and stood straight. "I don't understand how the people around me do it. I mean, I know I'm different. I come from a time hundreds of thousands of years ago or whatever-"

"Exaggerating," I said. "You're old as a mummy, not a star."

"Old. Exactly. Old is how I feel. You're from another time, too, though. Do you know what I mean? The phrase they say, what is it? 'Whale out of water?'"

"Close enough."

An ongoing Turbo Duel sped past along the duel lane twining over our heads. The rush of wind tossed her hair and threatened to tear down my hood. I stood steady against it. She swayed like a branch threatening to snap.

Rain hopped up the railing and sat with her legs dangling over the treacherous waters. Meters of air I dared not count separated her from the ocean. The infinity monument stretched to the sky before us. From the City, every color of the rainbow reflected in the facets of the gem topping the monument.

She didn't even bother gripping the railing tightly; her fingers curled and unfurled over the steel rail. I noticed my hand stretched toward her, not of my own volition, frankly. I balled the fingers into a fist and drew back. "Is your goal to use adrenaline to cut years off the end of your life?"

"I am a whale out of water," she whispered to the wind, "and I can't block things out like they do. The advertisements about 'arriving alive' leave me picturing fiery crashes, explosions, and victims taken away with tarps over their bodies. I see every rose-wreathed cross planted at the corner of a four way with a poor soul's name carved on it. There's a recent widower on the street I pass to reach my team's garage, and the flowers on the front porch have started to wilt. Whenever I'm with my friends, I- oh. I'm not sure I'm allowed to call them friends. But they're able to skim it like it's nothing. I want to be like them, but it feels wrong. I don't know what's right."

Headlight after headlight passed. A strong wind passed through. I watched her hair fly, watched the goosebumps rise on the back of her neck. My white robes flapped and clung to my legs. I stepped to her side and crossed my arms over the railing. Certain angles of the moving lights revealed the circuitry buried in the ruby casings at my wrists.

"A reality check is in order," I said. The lights of a runner speeding towards Satellite reflected off the casing and blinded me. My nose twisted, and I covered my wrist with my other hand. "Join the rest of us adults and bury the pity."

"Is that," she breathed, "what adulthood is about? In that case, why are you here? Why do you bother to save the future?"

"What a stupid question," I said.

But my mind turned. Why did I spend time on idiots who threaten to throw away their lives grinding the rail of a bridge? Why work every waking moment towards a society that spends millions on blaring adverts yet ignores the starving people on their streets in the same way those adverts are passed by?

Why did I want the humans I despised to have a future?

"Um." Rain had twisted to meet my eye. I kept watching the flare of changing advertisements and riding duels catch on the infinity monument. "Sorry for dropping that all on you. Venting can't be what you wanna hear after a rough day."

I raised my chin. "When and why did you begin caring about the status of my days?"

"Oh? Shouldn't I? I mean, you're the guy trying to save the world!" Her torso leaned towards mine, and her hand crept dangerously close to my fingertips. Her smile was like a drunkard's, but the sharpness of her eyes betrayed her insincerity. "You're my hero."

My skin crawled. I jumped back. She grinned and broke down in laughter. My eye twitched. "I'll make sure the Satellite goes first."

"Suuuure," she said. "Y'know, considering where you're from, I figured you might appreciate what the Satellite stands for."

"Poverty?"

"No! The struggle for equality and-"

"Ah, yes," I said, "my post-humanity's-genocide future is rife with human conflict."

"Uh." She chewed her lip. "Hm."

"I long to put a hard number on the amount of brain cells I've lost throughout this conversation."

Rain rubbed the heels of her hands down her thighs to rest on her knees. Waves crashed below. A cloud covered the crescent moon. "Hey, Primo?"

No. No, no, no. She'd uttered my name in that way, like the weight of the world lifted off her tongue as the word escaped. Through gritted teeth, I asked, "What?"

"You're the guy who never lies, right? I trust you to answer truthfully, so please." She locked eyes with me, and her whimsical expression decayed into solemnity. "I really would like to know what convinces the Sector Security Director who hates everybody to save those same people.

I wrung my wrist. The tight grip caused me to feel every beat of my manufactured pulse. She was like a shark smelling blood in the water, and I had sunk to the depths. My exhale huffed through my flared nostrils.

Lies were the tools of cowards. I gripped the railing and stood to my full height. I may only have had a couple of inches on her, but surely the effect came across.

"My reason," I said, "is…"

My fingers curled and the nails left scrapes in the metal. My jaw refused to unclench. Memories weren't pleasant walks but rather lodged shrapnel; excessive lingering on them could leave permanent damage.

I saw it, though. Blasts from the Meklord onslaught scarred the streets with ash and sinkholes. In the untouched center of a road at the space between the yellow lines, a blush-colored orchid had broken through the concrete and tar to grow in the sunshine.

An assault rifle hit the ground next to my foot. My companion's gray eyes sparkled like the rays of light landing on broken glass littering the ransacked road. Her combat boots inched forward in tiny, precious steps.

When she knelt by the flower, the grenades on her assault vest swayed. Her hand hovered above the orchid. The grime beneath her fingernails was a stark contrast to her fair skin. She caressed the petal like the flower was an intact snowflake.

She set her elbow on her knee and waved me over. I stepped forward. She frowned, and her forehead wrinkled above her black brows. I copied her inch-by-inch walk, and she was satisfied.

I knelt next to her. She waved her hand to the side. I lowered my rifle to the ground beside hers and set the targeting ballistics launcher with them.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

Her whisper was like the brush of robes over tile. In the silent and broken carcass of a city, we and the wind were the lone sounds.

Words weren't my most effective weapon. I answered with a smile that uplifted the wrinkles beneath my eyes. I wasn't old, but at nineteen I found patches of gray everyday. When I found them, I told myself that at least I had survived the genocide.

"It's possible," she said. "Look at this flower. The world was built to smother its life. The orchid grew. We can thrive, too. We can rebuild the world, [_ _ _ _ _ _]."

The world fuzzed like a television with a struggling antenna. I reached out my hand. Her fingers filled the spaces between mine, and my vision cleared. The touch of her gloved palm on my own settled my racing heart.

I repeated, "We can rebuild the world."

She smiled back, and a rush of wind whipped her black ponytail. She threw her rifle over her shoulder again, keeping her hand in mine like it was second nature.

When her back was turned, I picked the flower.

Rusted wrecked automobile bodies blocked the street. We climbed through the windows, careful to not let the jagged metal cut us. She whispered on how the skyscrapers wouldn't make proper fortresses because of the difficulty of escaping them. I argued the basements may be proper bunkers since organizations frequently upkept them as server rooms before the end of the world.

She relented, and we passed the threshold into a massive lobby. A wide chandelier had crashed onto the tile. Broken bulbs crushed beneath our boots. Kudzu climbed over the gilded casework and conquered the empty desks.

The place was fancy enough. In front of the chandelier, I fell to my knees and said, "Eurea Pastel."

She spun. Her thinned eyes said she was instantly wary. She hadn't suffered the same rapid aging I had. Her hair was jet-black and face smooth. It was her optimism, I thought; her outlook, I admired.

So I presented the plucked orchid.

"You," she breathed. My heart hammered my ribcage. The shine of the sun in her widened eyes inspired my hope. Her fingers curled into fists. She said, "You are a fucking idiot."

I flinched. My grip tightened on the flower, and the stem drooped. She yelled, "How dare you? This was our symbol of hope, of life, of our only chance, and you kill it? How could you be so dense? I can't believe this. You wanted it for what? Some sort of romantic gesture?"

The pose of sitting on my knees suddenly felt silly and childish.

She dropped to a knee and placed pressure on my wrist. I let the orchid fall. She whispered, "Love is not explosion after explosion. It's the way dripping water can halve a mountain in time. It's the natural brush of the fingertips into holding hands, the silent exchange of words in the language only we know, and the understanding you'll listen to every spoken and unspoken word I feel. You're stupid because you show me minute by minute how you feel yet try to convey it in silly, extravagant acts."

She cupped my cheek, and her small, genuine smile made an appearance. "I love you, too, dummy."

Calm washed over my fear. I eased my face into her caress. She laughed a little and pecked my other cheek. She ran for the stairs. "Race you to the thirteenth floor!"

In that second, my heart stopped.

Not the blood ceasing to pump, no; my heart stopped being. In its place, a clockwork mechanism ticked like a timer refusing to pause, like a bomb moments from causing devastation.

I opened my mouth but the scream refused to form:

DON'T GO

My body shivered as though stripped in subzero temperatures.

STAY I NEED YOU

Her footsteps sprinted farther and farther. I tried again and again to call out. Nothing changed. As time's slave I followed the past's orders and walked up the staircase. The inevitability and futility and agony prickled like thorns on every inch of my skin but I did not and could not stop.

Then a soft warmth replaced the pain on my right hand.

are you okay

Black bars corroded my vision. I stutter stepped. The darkness swallowed me whole.

I was left standing on the Daedalus Bridge. I couldn't feel the wind, and the shouts of the Turbo Duels sounded centuries away. Rain Orichalcum was there, her hand over my own. She repeated, "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

My first instinct was to snap back my hand. I fought it for the fact that her touch grounded me in this reality, and if I moved back to the other…

"What an unnecessary inquiry," I said. I'd meant it as a snap but my volume remained low and tone weak. "'Am I okay.' I exist, do I not? None who suffer such an affliction are 'okay.'"

She puffed a sigh. "Yep. That's you for sure. You were staring off into space and started shaking, so I guess I freaked out a little."

"It's cold."

"In some kind of way, yeah," she said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't try to get so personal with my nemesis, huh."

I remained acutely aware of her hand on mine.

I did not move away. "Through osmosis, you might suffer from seeing the world through my eye. You're lucky you're ignorant."

"I don't think I am. Lucky. Or ignorant! Um." She pulled her hand back. It was cold after all. "Thanks for talking to me."

"How do you manage to speak in a way that makes you the most pitiful animal on the planet?"

"It's a skill, really!"

I snorted. "I see now the influence you have on those around you; this was the most unproductive night of my life. I'll enjoy seeing you lose in the WRGP tomorrow."

The way towards the city was blinding with the bright, forgotten advertisements. She called, "Primo!"

I shouldn't have stopped. Some ungodly force of the universe urged me into halting.

"Do you," she started. Her voice was quiet as a whisper when she tried next: "I hope I see you again."

The weight of words unspoken was too much to bear. Once upon a time, my someone would have heard every word uttered or thought. She was magical.

Our language died with Eurea. Perhaps that was my reason: if I followed Z-ONE, if the timeline was rewritten, the opportunity may exist to be heard again.

Until then, I was a muted monstrosity.

Therefore I left Orichalcum without a word.

end

A/N: in celebration of Primo being added to Duel Links... I couldn't help myself. Got the mind turning c: Thanks for reading!