AN: The later half of this feels pretty awkward and sloppy to me, but I can't think of a way to make it . . . less so, so here it is.

The gentle sound of rain pattering off of wood. The swish of leaves and needles as they swayed back and forth under the falling liquid, growing heavier and lighter again as the water built up and ran off. The solid 'swoosh' of larger amounts of built up liquid falling. The splattering of droplets hitting puddles.

I loved the rain. Or, at least, I loved the rain when I wasn't soaked. I would admit, the atmosphere became a bit more drowsy and depressing, and I was in no way immune to that, but I couldn't help but find the precipitation enchanting, especially in the forest.

I suppose I would have been much less amused by the rain had it still been pouring cats and dogs, but it had calmed down to a steady drizzle by the morning.

. . . there was something . . . poetic, to how I'd had a mental breakdown while it was pouring outside . . .

I shook away that absent thought, and redoubled by walking pace.

After I'd recovered from my breakdown the night before, I realized that it had been nearly two-hundred days since I'd visited town, and I was starting to feel contact starved. So, since there was no chance I was going to get back to sleep, I instead directed my thoughts towards planning for a trip back towards civilization. It had done wonders to keep my mind off of my . . . existential crisis?

So, the next morning, I had gathered a mass of supplies into a large leather travel-pack, wrapped a thick fur around my shoulders, grabbed my "umbrella", picked up my makeshift tent, put on the thick straw woven boots I had gotten the last time I was in town, and set out.

Was it perhaps a bad idea to run off after only a few hours planning? Yes. Were there probably a half dozen little things I could have, and probably should have, done before I took off? Yes. But . . . well, put simply, I didn't care. I needed someone to talk to. And no amount of lost trading opportunities was going to stop me.

This led me to my current circumstances. Walking through the rain in a pair of straw boots, under a bees wax coated wooden umbrella I had put together roughly a year prior, enjoying the cool, moist feeling in the air.

. . . Now if only there wasn't a headwind.

I suppose it was to be expected, seeing as I was walking along the edge of the river, but that didn't make it any less annoying to be hit in the face with a stray droplet of water every few seconds. I was not about to let it ruin my good mode, however. I was on my way back to town, I was going to visit some friends I hadn't seen in months, and I was going to . . . well, I hadn't planned for anything else.

Of course, reaching town, while far from a difficult journey, was somewhat inconvenient. I suppose it was my own fault, building my home as far away as I had. Though I still felt my decision to get away from the population was justified, the fact that took a full three, sometimes four, days to reach meant that I didn't make the trip there very often.

At the very least, it wasn't a difficult path to remember. All I really had to do was follow the river upstream until I reached a stone bridge, cross said bridge, and then follow the road for another six or so hours. Child's play. 'If it wasn't so easy to remember, chances are I would have forgotten the way back years ago, and ended up having to wander around until I found it again.'

After yet another droplet of water hit me in the eye, and I found myself, not for the first time, wishing I could get a pair of glasses. Unfortunately, while I knew for a fact that they were available, it would supposedly take me several months worth of walking to reach an area where I could buy a pair, and that was assuming I could afford them. From what I understood, they were monstrously expensive.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. 'Wait . . . I can make an energy platform to block the rain!' I palmed my face in annoyance. 'As long as I don't need to worry about them being strong enough to stand on, I can make them mobile!'

Chirps. Whistles. Caws. Hums. The sound of the forest in the early morning was dominated by the sound of bird song, gently rousing me from my slumber. I knew those sounds, and could identify each of the types of birds by their calls. Or at least their appearance, if no their names. I would normally find being woken up gently like that to be quite pleasant. Except . . .

'Of course. I search the ground for lumps three times before I set up my tent, and I still manage to wind up sleeping on a rock. Of course.'

It had been three days since I set out for town(did it have a name? I didn't remember), and in my rush to reach the settlement I had found myself walking long hours into the night. Apparently, between my exhausted state of mind, poor eyesight, and the rather shoddy lighting from my sphere's, I had managed to miss a stone. A stone I had rolled onto some time in the night.

I groaned, crawling out of my, admittedly primitive, tent. Rising to my feet, I took a moment to stretch, and rubbed at the sore spot on my ribs. Cracking my neck, I checked the suns position in the sky. 'Ok . . . looks like it's been up for . . . I'd say, two hours now. If I leave right away, I may be able to make it to town by noon.'

Turning back to my "tent", I lifted the top layer of leather off of the sticks that acted as supports, and pulled said sticks out of the ground. Lifting the bottom layer off of the ground, I found the lump that had bruised my side while I was sleeping. Apparently, it was a root, rather that a rock. Not that that was any better.

Shrugging, I laid the outer layer of the tent flat on the ground, with the side that had been exposed down. I then piled on the middle layer and blanket, before placing the bottom layer on the top, dirty side face up. Then, I placed all of the sticks that serves as the tent's skeleton on one side, rolled it all up, and tied up the resulting . . . burrito? with strips of leather. I deposited the roll of wood and leather inside of my travel-pack, and took off walking.

Without eating breakfast. Or drinking anything. Five minutes later, I had dehydration induced leg cramps.

I proceeded to guzzle back my water-skin dry like I hadn't drank anything substantial in weeks and spent the next few minutes massaging the back of my calf in an attempt to get back to the point where I could walk without pain. I was only partially successful, and I ultimately had to jump straight to healing myself before my leg could support my weight comfortably.

Of course, now I had an empty water-skin, leaving me with three options. Either drink straight river-water and risk getting sick, take up to an hour to get a fire going and boil water in the pot I had brought along for that propose, or wait until I got to the town and could use one of their wells.

I was extremely tempted to go with the last option, but then I'd risk getting more cramps. 'If I get more cramps, I'll have to drink water from the river anyway, so either I drink water straight from the river or I boil it.'

I knew that it was safer to just take the time to boil some more water. It would take me a while to do, maybe an hour(not that I had any way to gauge the actual amount of time it took), but I'd still be able to make it to town in a good amount of time. No need to take risks to cut off an hour of travel time . . .

. . . I filled my water skin with river water and returned to my previous walking pace. 'Here's hoping I don't make myself sick.'

The sound of my feet hammering into the ground pounded out a steady rhythm, and the timing of my breathing had long ago reached a consensus with m footsteps. Between the sun shining down from above, and my own physical activity, I had decided to take off my robe, more out of a desire to avoid getting said robe covered in sweat, than any need to keep cool.

Of course, as someone who was usually shielded from the bright sunlight by the forest canopy, having the sun shine directly on my, rather pale, skin was actually quite uncomfortable. The lack of robe only made it worse, and I soon found myself wishing to put it back on.

I ignored the impulse though. A little sunlight was unlikely to hurt me, and I didn't want to show up at the town covered in sweat.

I could tell from some of the land marks(a large red rock and a willow tree) that I had about a two hour walk until I reached the bridge, and another six hours until town. If I wanted to make it by noon, which would be in four hours, then I needed to keep jogging. Or running, I suppose, though it wasn't exactly a fast run.

As I pumped my legs and gripped the strap of my travel-pack to keep it from bouncing, a vague memory floated to the surface. How, back when I'd first woken up on the edge of town several years before, I could barely run for a minute before I needed to stop and take a breather. Now I could run for a couple of hours without a break, assuming I was willing to pull on a little of my body's energy stores.

'I wonder when I went from totally inept to actually kinda capable . . . was it around the time when I first left? No, that was a total mess . . . was it when I killed my first deer? No wait, that was before I left . . . that thing with the boar? No that was way more recent . . . '

My mind continued to wander for the next few minutes, and I soon enough found myself going over topics totally unrelated to my initial thoughts. Like wondering if I could use the same method I used to propel my explosive spheres to jump really high. But, soon enough, my thought returned to more recent event's, and I realized that there was something else I should be doing . . .

"Don't fade out, we'll go of script,"

"The last scene's behind out silent lips,"

"We're signed on for a sequel, but nobody's seen the first act,"

"Seen the first act,"

"Of a hundred stories just like yours,"

"Through the history of an endless war,"

"They've come back,"

"Signed on for a sequel,"

"But nobody's seen the first act,"

"Seen the first act before,"

. . . sing, to be specific.

In the time it had been since I'd last spoken to anyone I . . . well, I hadn't spoken, and my voice had, of course, stagnated. So, I had decided on my first day of travel to exercise my voice through talking to myself and singing. Thus, I had dug up the lyrics and melodies from the whatever part of my mind stored them, and been signing for at least an hour every day as I ran.

'It's strange how clearly I can remember songs, when everything else is blurry.' I mused. 'Even the instruments . . . actually, what kind of instrument even makes the kind of sounds that go with this song?'

Before I could ponder that line of thought more deeply(Not that I hadn't dozens of times before, it came up practically every time I sang anything), I saw the arching silhouette of the bridge come into view ahead of me.

'Wait, is that . . . ? I thought it would take me . . . have I just gotten faster, or was I that lost in thought? . . . it doesn't matter.' Seeing the cobblestone structure extending over the river, I put on an extra burst of speed. If I was ahead of schedule, then I could afford to take a breather as soon as I got there. Maybe stop to eat some of the smoked deer meat I had packed.

I took me another few minutes to cover the distance to the bridge, during which I completed another verse of the song and repeated the chorus in my admittedly shaky tenor, and I soon enough found myself running on cobblestone instead of dirt.

I slowed down to a slow walk once my feet were on the stone stretching my arms behind my back. After several months of walking on dirt, sand, gravel, and occasionally wood, the sensation of my feet striking the smooth cobblestone road was quite nostalgic. Not necessarily comfortable, but nostalgic.

I speed-walked towards the bridge, eager to have a chance to take a break and have something to eat. However, as I grew nearer, I noticed something wrong, and slowed to a halt.

'Rude!' I thought in annoyance, seeing that the Bronze name-plate that had been riveted into stone pillar that began the bridges railing had been chiselled out. Someone must have stolen it. I sighed and shook my head in disappointment. 'Not that I could read what the plate actually said . . . '

Putting that thought out of my head, 'After all, what can I do? It's not like I have any way of finding out who did it.', and turned my focus to the rest of the bridge.

It was a large, stone construct, supported with thick pillars reaching down into the water bellow. From the long decayed wooden structures lining either side, I assumed that it had at one point been a covered bridge, but must have changed at some point before I first arrived.

The stone itself showed a fair amount of wear and tear from years being exposed to the elements, with cracks and small pits pocketing the, otherwise smooth, path. I could tell from the odd, ugly patch of some sort of mortar that at some point in the past someone had gone around trying to fill in said pits, with limited success. But I supposed that it wouldn't be to bumpy for a horse-drawn carriage to pass.

I walked over to the railing of the bridge, and sat down. I had never liked the railing, it was to short to stop someone from falling off, an unfortunate side effect of the wood rotting off, but at the very least it was a decent height to use as a seat.

Shifting my travel-pack off of my back, I deposited it on the ground in front of me and undid the sinple strap. I had to scrounge around for a moment of two, but I quickly found the smoke-dried deer meat I had packed and began to gnaw my way through a piece, chewing the pieces thoroughly, and washing down the bites with sips of river-water.

"Ho there!" A voice called from nearby, sending a shudder down my spine. For a brief moment, I felt the urge to jump, but fought it down. The only physical motions I made were a brief tightening of my jaw, and a my fingers jolting.

I looked up, seeing three men walking down the bridge towards me from the opposite side of the bridge. Two of them were wearing robes, and the third seemed to be shirtless, with the shirtless one using what seemed to be a hiking stick. They were all dark haired

The trio was approaching me quickly, but stop halfway when the shirtless one held up a hand, continuing on alone until he was close enough for me to see him more clearly.

He was tall, having at least two inches on me height wise, and even with my poor eyesight I could tell he was quite muscular. His hair was short, and I couldn't quite make out whether it was brown or black.

He was wearing a leather vest, that had been left open at the front, rather than being shirtless as I had assumed, and a pair of baggy pants that were torn off at the knees. None of these things were especially concerning to me. The fact that his "hiking stick" seemed to have a kitchen knife strapped to the end on the other hand . . .

"Um . . . uh . . . " I floundered, before settling on an uncertain "Hel . . . lo?"

The man stopped roughly five steps away from me, one hand on his hip while the other planted the shaft of his spear(and it was a spear. That or a chef's knife with a stupid long handle) into the stone as a support.

I took advantage of his closer position, looking him up and down for anything I had missed while he was further away. Now that he was closer, I could make out how the general shape of his face, and the several discoloured patches of his skin. Whether said patches were scars or something else I couldn't say(they were scars).

He said nothing for several seconds, the silence growing awkward quite quickly. I, confused, nervous an not having had a conversation in the better part of a year, simply waited for him to break the silence.

"So, you heading to the town?" He finally asked after enough time elapsed that I probably could have sung another verse of the song.

'Finally!' "Uh, yes. That's right. . . . who's asking?"

"Hmm? My name's . . . " He rolled his hand in the air for a moment, as if thinking. " . . . Okabe, and I'm the head guard of this bridge. Me and my men back there are hear to make sure that no . . . unsavoury characters make their way to the town. You haven't seen anyone suspicious recently, have you?" He finished his question with a teeth bearing smile, though with my poor vision I couldn't identify any of the less obvious traits that would reveal more complex emotions.

'A bridge guard?' I though incredulously. 'Yeah, right, the rivers not bad enough that you couldn't just swim across, there's no point to having a bridge guard. And that hesitation . . . he probably gave me a fake name. Still, better play along . . . '

"Bridge guards?" I forced a chuckle. "You lot, aren't, doing a very good job, are you? Some-body stone the name-plate . . . stole, I meant to say stole."

If "Okabe" noticed or cared about my shaky speach, he didn't show it. "Ugh, that happened before I got here. Probably part of the reason they wanted a guard in the first place." He explained hurriedly.

"Hmm, I see . . ." I nodded. "and, who decided, that the bridge needed guards? Last I checked, there was nobody around here that was . . . shall we say, "in charge". Of course, it's been over half a year since I was in town, so . . . "

"Ah, that would be boss Sachio. He took over recently, and he's been doing his best to get the district under control. You know how much of a pit it used to be."

"I see . . . " I put a hand to my chin. "I've never heard of this Sachio person, but then again I don't have the best memory when it comes to that . . . never forget a face but names elude me . . . " I shrug.

"He only just came to this district a few months ago, so I guess you haven't heard of him yet. Well, don't you worry, you'll know about him soon enough." Okabe explained in a tone that was only slightly sinister. "He's been doing his best to make this hole of a district a better place."

For several seconds, neither of us said anything, me digesting the information and him waiting for my response. Not that I had any idea how to respond. 'Is this guy lying to me? Having a guard here makes no sense, so probably . . . the only people who would need to use the bridge are people using carriages . . '

I found myself mentally debating all of the reasons that one wouldn't want carriages crossing a bridge, starting with things such as wars and banditry before moving into more niche possibilities, before realizing that the silence was dragging on again. I spent several seconds longer panicking over what to say, before deciding to throw tact out of the window. " . . . alright, you know what? Never mind the sall . . . small talk. What do you want?"

Okabe chuckled and leaned forward on his spear, and I noticed his two buddies take a few steps closer to us. "Ah, well. You see, Boss Saicho's been working hard to make district sixty eight a safer place. Keep everybody safe, get bandits off the roads, you know, the whole deal. But, that takes money. So, he decided that it was only fair that all the people benefiting from all of his hard work . . . shall we say, pitch in."

"So . . . money." I deadpan.

"We have a smart one here boys!" Okabe cheered, before taking a few steps forward until he was within arms reach. "Normally, if you want to cross the river, you'd have to pay a toll. Of course, if you don't happen to have any kan on you, I suppose we could search through that pack of yours and see if you have anything else to pay with."

I fought down the urge to flinch as he closed the distance, taking a deep breath. I did have my coin-purse with me, but . . .

" . . . and why should I have to pay you, exactly? No offence, but I have yet to notice any difference, and for all I know your just trying to rob me. You don't exactly look like a tax co-llec-tor in capabis-capaba . . . you don't exactly look like your off-ic-i-al."

"Hmm, a good point." Okabe nodded, glancing from me, to something behind me, and back to me. "But, that inplies you have a choice."

Realizing what the look implied, I took a step back and looked over my shoulder. There were three more guys behind me. 'Dammit!I didn't even . . . Calm down, calm down, this is still fine . . . you handled the bear you can handle this . . . just . . . '

Okata, not concerned with my mental zigzaging, continued. "Of course, if you really want to avoid paying, you could always dive into the river and hope that Shogo doesn't hit you with his bow. But, if I were you, I'd just hand over the money and go on my way. No reason to bet your life."

I stepped back, pressing myself into the side of the bridge, where I could see booth groups of men with minimal head movement, and began to make a plan.

"I . . . don't, really, like gambling." I muttered, before repeating it louder. "I don't really like gambling. But, I'm not going to pay you guys. So, let's make a bet."

"Oh? It doesn't look like you have anything to bet to me." The thug sounded so smug.

"I have five hundred kan." I continued, ignoring the sick feeling at the back of my throat and pounding in my ears. "Fifty coins. What are you willing to bet for that?"

Now he was frowning. "I said you don't have anything to gamble, now hand-"

I cut him off, suddenly flaring my power. "I'm not, just betting the coins. Your, not just betting the coins." I steadied me breath again, breathed in deeply, and began to form sphere's in the air around me.

One sphere, two sphere's, three sphere's . . .

Okata watched the sphere's form, suddenly much less confident, and I saw most of the other men pull out weapons of some sort. Axes and clubs mostly, but there was one bow.

. . . four sphere's, five sphere's, six sphere's . . .

"Do you see that tree?" I pointed to a tree on the other side of the river, Okata following my finger. Before the bandit(?) could ask any questions, one of the sphere's I can conjured shot off towards the tree I'd singled out. It collided with the tree with a thunderous sound, and the trunk was reduced to splinters instantly. The tree didn't only come down, it was sent flying a short distance, and the surrounding evergreens were stripped of a large amount of bark.

Needless to say, "Okata" flinched, hard.

. . . Six sphere's, seven sphere's, eight sphere's . . .

"Now here's the bet. You lot and I fight. If you win, you get fifty coins. If I win, I BRING DOWN THE WHOLE BRIDGE. Now. What. Are. You. Willing. TO. BET?"