Enter username...
Username? What was that?
Reborn frowned at the translucent yellow board floating a meter or so from the tip of his nose. It followed his line of sight and was perpetually smack dab on whatever he faced.
The upper half of the board only had those two words but the lower half had rows of the complete alphabet notably not in the alphabetical order, the numbers one to zero, and a collection of symbols he mostly recognized.
He had already done everything that he could've done to slip through an illusion. Including the more extreme ones, as evidence by his slightly mangled left arm -desperate measures and all that. After all, he didn't know what an illusionist could possibly want by casting an illusion that only made him confused but not knowing was the entire danger behind it.
Reborn absently massaged his arm and after a flash of yellow flames later, it was as good as new.
To the extent of his knowledge, which was rather extensive if he might say so himself, this was not an illusion. He'd even searched for the connection between him and the floating board -because with it seemingly anchored to him, there had to be something- and blasted the thing with high density Sun Flames.
No reaction though. It stayed fixed.
Raking a hand through his hair, Reborn reached up and spelled out his name.
Reborn
With the first letter he pressed, the button that read 'enter' lit up. He pressed it.
Beep.
Establishing connection with Arcobaleno GroupChat...
Ping!
Connection established.
Then the board flickered into a black backdrop with white bold letters.
Arcobaleno Fourth Incarnation Welcomes Sixth Incarnation
Beep.
Then a man appeared in the screen, blinking back at Reborn. The hit man's brows furrowed.
This is... a film?
He wore black kohl around his eye and had cloth over his hair and the way his lips moved didn't match with what Reborn was hearing -which was also in Italian.
"I am the Fourth incarnation of the Twilight Sky, I go by the name Menes."
His tone couldn't be said to be solemn. But neither was it carefree.
"What you are experiencing now, is the Arcobaleno mainframe that I have created."
This was the first time Reborn had seen a film this long and it was probably an insult to even put it in the same category as what he knew to be a 'film'.
"The fact that you are listening to this in this very second only means that the requirements have been reached and the trigger activated. Currently, there are eight people listening to this record most likely from different corners of the world."
The man's, Menes', form was so clear he could really have been peering at him through a window between time and space for all that Reborn could feel the life of the man.
And more unnerving, Reborn was suddenly feeling as if he knew him.
And not just in a superficial 'dead pharaoh that might have probably been just a myth anyways' way.
"As much as I would like to explain more, there is much to cover and I do not have the sufficient ability to both impart to you the necessary knowledge and warn you of what exactly everything might entail."
The man frowned then sighed.
"I of course have a solution for that and I advise that you brace yourself. Forgive me in advance for the ensuing discomfiture and distress but there is not much more I can do to prepare you for it."
Then an abrupt wave of pain pierced through his mind to the point that he was already being yanked back into consciousness before he realized he had even blacked out.
He supposed he really should've gone back to the hotel first before he tinkered with the mystery floating square. He fell from the crate he had been sitting on and collapsed on the damp alley ground, struggling to stifle his grunts as he gritted his teeth.
Fragmented and vague memories rushed into him, cluttered and muddled and detached but still, somehow, unmistakably his.
In that state of half awake and half asleep (maybe dead), he dreamt.
He dreamt of being many people.
Each one with different names and different lives, different set of parents and friends, and different values from different times and places. Some as good as one could be good, some as evil and vile as the lines permitted, and some being worse.
It was a cacophony of lives with similarities and differences of not being able to be reconciled with being one.
For an instance, he slipped and let go.
And he was thousand and thousand of faces and opinions.
Then the Mainframe -which he now knew to have been created by the Sky, Sky, his Sky, their Sky- settled in his the back of his consciousness.