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[ Chapter 3 : Spiral ]
They were dumbfounded, completely. The trio of girls, An, Mariko, And Megumi, roamed back indoors and took up places in the living room just as Shinichiro was finishing up some story involving coffee makers and short skirts. Whatever mirth they knew then was quickly forgotten as An explained what they were thinking. "That's..."
"Possible," Mariko stated sternly. "Have you already forgotten what happened with An? No one thought what she was going through was possible. Know that we know what can happen, is it wise to ignore what might be another case? One that we might be able to help with?"
Kazuhiro sighed. "She's right. If I hadn't gone on a hunch myself, I probably never would have found An. Maybe the boy is Sora, maybe it isn't; either way, it wouldn't hurt to take a look. If they're right, the more harm might come from us not doing anything."
Unease snaked its way around the room. Having someone that they knew, be it in complete and utter disdain, fall prey to whatever it was that had knocked so many others into comas was unsettling enough. When the fallen might be a young boy... Shinichiro fidgeted with the arm of the couch. "Looks like we'll be taking a field trip, then?"
Isshin scooted up to his feet, digging keys out from his pocket. "Good thing I drove... That old van'll be of some use after all."
The group walked out of the house just as they had entered, filed one by one through the narrow front door. Parked on the curb was an obscenely boxy van stained a shade or two off white. It was trimmed off with black plastic, which did little to add any sort of style to it. It was, simply put... a van. When he got a number of faintly horrified looks, he shrugged and numbly stuck the keys in to unlock the doors. "It was practically a steal! Plus she's got A/C and a radio, that's all I really need in a car."
"So in other words, you're cheap," teased Megumi. She hauled open the side door with some help from An, and climbed into the back. Suddenly she jumped, staring hard at the floor. "Yuck, what is this!" she yelped. "Everything's so... clean!"
Kazuhiro and Shinichiro helped Mariko into a seat near the middle of the vehicle, and folded up her wheelchair to set it beside her. Akiko took up the passenger's side seat and immediately began commandeering the radio, despite Isshin's grouchy protests. Once everyone was settled in and all buckled up*, he started the behemoth up and lurched on down the street.
Everyone kept relatively quiet. Kazuhiro instructed Isshin on where to turn and such, while the girls in the back chatted quietly among themselves. It took but ten minutes through roads filled with imaginary traffic to make it to a well kept looking hospital that stood stark white against the valley that the city was nestled in. The parking wasn't as hectic as it should have been, something Shinichiro could not help but marvel at because of his familiarity with hectic big city life. An regarded the place with solemn familiarity as they found a spot near the entrance and headed for the receptionist's desk.
The receptionist looked extremely surprised to see a group come in at once, even if the said group numbered only seven. She nudged her glasses up along the bridge of her nose with the eraser end of a pencil and smiled sweetly at Kazuhiro, who took up the lead. "Good afternoon, sir, how may I help you?"
"Ahh, we're here to meet a patient who I believe was brought in a few months prior to today... I'm afraid I can't tell you what his name is, I can tell you what he's in for."
Sluggishly she regarded each of the faces gathered behind Kazuhiro; the thoughts that went through her mind were almost visible as wrinkles inching their way up a furrowed brow. "So you don't know who it is you're here to meet...?"
"That's the way it's looking. Well, not really... We've met him before. It's a long story."
The receptionist finally took a long look at An, pointing her out with her pencil. "I remember you... Are you doing ok? Everyone was so worried, all the nurses especially. They said they were watching over an angel."
Pink took hold of An's cheeks, but she bowed politely to the woman. "Yes, I'm doing wonderful now thanks to everyone... But I'm not so sure about this boy. From what I understand, he's in a condition just like mine."
It was as if all the others had disappeared. The receptionist dug through the shelf of a file cabinet, plucked out a single file, and looked over the contents. Over the counter, An could see a picture of a young boy with sharp eyes. "Yes, yes... A coma. No sign of recovery, but no sign of anything else for that matter. His mother's been worried sick, literally... She's taken up the room next to her boy." She flipped a page and blinked in surprise. "Looks like he got the room you were in... All the intensive care stuff was still in there so they decided to stick him in."
"Do you think we could...?" An asked hesitantly. Much to her relief, the receptionist smiled warmly at her, and finally to her friends.
"You remember the way, right? Up on the third floor, fifth door on the left down that far left hall. I'm sure having some visitors might do some good, even if we can't see it..."
An bowed again graciously, and led the group on towards the elevator. It was a relatively small hospital so the elevators were also relatively small, to the point to where it took two turns up and down to get everyone onto the third floor. The hallways were practically empty. From time to time a nurse would move from one room to another, and empty gurneys would be taken down to the lower levels, but for the most part there was little there but the sounds of their footsteps and the faint humming of air conditioning. Dreadfully sterile.
They walked down to the appropriate hallway and to the appropriate door. An paused in front of it to examine the name scrawled on a tag in a framed slip on the wall: Hiroshi Yanaka. Then, quietly, she gave the knob a turn and pushed the door open.
The very first thing that hit them all, even before the pale lights from the ceiling fixtures and the window that looked out across a small courtyard trimmed with pink, was the smell. It was not anything noxious or even all that disgusting, it was simply a wall of odor that rushed out to invade the air in the hallway. The smell of medicines and disinfectants, rubber and plastic. An didn't seem to notice it.
It was a small room dominated chiefly by a small bed, the head-end of which was encircled partly by a number of machines and monitors that hooked themselves up to the pale figure beneath the sheets. It was as somber as a funeral procession, a saddened family gathering around an open casket not quite knowing why they are sad. There in the bed was a boy with the complexion of a corpse: his skin was lightly tanned but it had been drained of almost all color, degrading into a faint gray hue. Green hair stuck against his forehead with the remnants of sweat long since evaporated. The face was unmistakable, from the arch in his nose and the curve of his cheeks, his own special brand of boyish charm. Sora lay before them.
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"Once upon a time there was a blademaster who was kind of heart, whose soul was forged with justice and good will towards his fellow players. He, along with another blademaster, conquered the One Sin and became known as the greatest warriors in all The World. One day, he took a friend out on his first adventure. The end."
"... No, not quite the end. I'm still here, aren't I?"
It might have been mistaken for a shift in lighting if there was any light there to be concerned with. The staff floated in the graying landscape that was once Morganna's. A band of violet, arched like lightning, darted from point to point. "True, yes," it said in the language that could not be heard, seen, or read, but simply felt by those who knew how. "But that is beside the point. You are not here as well."
"Well how about this... Once upon a time there was a twin blade who talked too much. One day he said the wrong things to the wrong person, and that person became very, very upset at him. And on yet another day, he grew a spine and stood up for his friends. The end."
"Another fallacy. You are not very bright for a Descendant of Fianna."
"It's just a title in a game."
A subdued flicker of green and white lurked through the curves and sharp edges of the staff, trying its best to ignore the violet streaks that danced mindlessly throughout their "home." Only a matter of weeks had passed since the one called Orca was defeated by Skeith, and an even shorter amount of time since the one called Kite had defeated it. It still lurked the empty areas of The World, perhaps as a reminder of what could be. But to them, it was little more than a prison in which they had been forced together. They did not find this agreeable in the slightest.
Thankfully enough it was made at least somewhat tolerable, in an extremely loose sense of the word.
"I don't understand this," said Orca for what must have been the millionth time. In actuality it was only the third, but Sora remembered liking exaggeration when it was appropriate, or inappropriate as the case may be. "Kite beat it - you saw it! - but we're still here... He'll get us out soon. He's got the bracelet..."
"He's bound to fail. Running into disaster like that... His good luck has to run out sooner or later."
"Just like yours did?"
Sora fumed silently. "I did not go looking for it. He is. When he dies, I will savor being one to say, 'I told you so.'"
"Just as I will when he frees us."
"You are also rather level-headed for an elite character," Sora remarked, not sure if he was trying to find a nerve or not. "It's rare for one such as you to have so much faith in a newbie character."
"There's nothing elite about me. Plus Kite's my friend... He'll help out, I know it. He's got the bracelet."
"As if that means anything. I found the Key but look what it got me."
Mass and space was a purely relative matter. Outside the staff there was space; a plethora all around which is perceived as such simply because the staff took up very little space in comparison to the total amount that it could have taken up. It was a most curious misconception because in reality, they were both more or less equal in size to the point of having what difference there was be completely negligible. Likewise, the space within the staff, rather than of the staff itself, conformed to the equality of size even though it most definitely should not by all means: the staff was not designed hollow.
Sora often fancied himself to be lying on the bottom side of the circular shape that intersected the cross, often with his hands behind his head as if watching for stars. There were none, of course, but the mere act made the fact seem inconsequential.
Orca was usually leaning against the curve on the opposite side of the staff, keeping as far away from the former player killer without resulting to scaling up to the very top of the staff. "Be ignorant if you like," he said, shaking his head in aggravation. "I know he will accomplish something."
Pointedly Sora ignored him. There were other things to think about besides Orca's hopelessness: the thing that bound them was not without flaws. Sora was not only staring up into the bluish black void but into the very essence of the staff itself. He had noticed it a while after he had been taken in; inside there was no sense of space, only the curves of an infinite horizon, and something more. Little by little he had learned to pick out traces of symbols flying through the endless sky, not only their existence but also their meaning... It was only a matter of time until their shortcomings would reveal themselves to him. Every lock had a key.
Several days prior (days being yet another relative term) he had found the crack. It rarely showed itself to him: code was like water, forever flowing as long as it was given the momentum to do so. As the moon circled the earth, the crack circled him. Orca had not noticed it, but he had noticed nothing at all to begin with. It was a miniscule thing wrought from a single fragment of redundant code. Its very existence baffled and intrigued Sora; it was his understanding that this, the staff, was meant to be a tomb for stolen souls. If it was possible to escape, its existence would be useless, a mere waste of effort and process. Not the workings of an AI, or any other machine whose actions were governed by solid logic. It showed itself again now, as it did every so often, flickering brighter than the surrounding bits of code. Down the wall it crept like water from a leaky roof. It was near Orca, sliding down towards his right shoulder...
Sora watched it intently and rose to approach it. The blademaster watched him wearily, increasingly so when he realized that he was not the target of Sora's attention. "What...?"
Sora's hands pressed against the invisible wall. It would be useless to try and rip it open physically, if only because the idea of physical force was laughable in the data stream. Thoughts piled up behind his eyes.
"What are you looking at?" grunted a confused Orca. He was staring at the wall too and saw nothing but the absolute nothing.
"The way out. And it's not on some fancy bracelet."
"What are you talking about? There's nothing there."
"So who's the ignorant one?"
Orca glowered. "Maybe 'ignorant' wasn't the right word. How about 'insane?'"
Useless talking. Inch by inch the crack crawled, always just beyond Sora's fingertips. He clawed at it but it would not come to him, would not open. "Shut up and help me."
"With what? There's -"
Sora's hands turned into fists and slammed a single time hard against the wall, but then again they didn't: he felt no pressure, heard no noise, doomed to halt seemingly against the emptiness. "Do you have any idea how long I've been in here?" he asked, his voice suddenly very soft and quiet.
Orca hesitated; when people went all quiet like that, it was usually bad news. At once he looked uncertain, and he shook his head with great unease.
"Neither do I. Maybe it's only been a few days, maybe it's been a few years. I don't want to be here. I never wanted to be here, I never asked to..." He didn't take his eyes off the crack but he could see Orca frown and fidget. "And I am not going to sit and wait for anyone to come and find me. He's not coming. He's forgotten."
"Who has?"
Sora did not answer. Time had passed, of course it had - Time did not stand by for mortals, even when they were not in the most mortal form. Patience was a virtue but even it had limits. Even the crack, glowing brightly among the softer whites of code that wrapped around it like broken wings, would not wait for him to break it open. As it slid further and further down, he did as well, ending up on his knees when it faded into the darkness. Lost again.
"You haven't done anything," he said.
Orca, once again, hesitated. "What is there to do? We're trapped."
The twin blade rose to his feet slowly, movements smooth as velvet. When he turned, his gaze was fire, smoldering within the confines of irises that barely kept them in check. "We're as trapped as long as you think we will be. There is a way out, there has to be! As long as you're content to just sit and rot, though, that's what we'll do."
"Do you think I want to be here?" Orca snarled, returning a glare infused with a sudden sprout of rage. "Do you think I haven't been thinking of a way to try and get out? Sure, there has to be a way out, but I'm not seeing it, and I'm not about to go crazy trying to. If we think this through logically we'll find something."
A heavy sigh heaved Sora's shoulders. "Logic. Ok, I can do that. Number one, we're being held in staff whose owner, number two, has been destroyed rendering, number three, the staff inactive and immobile as far as we know."
"And you were saying that you saw some way out...?"
"Yes," said Sora. His hand brushed against the wall, pointing out the path it had last taken. "I guess... I've been able to pick up on things, the general make-up of The World... Like right now, you look sort of like a blob of code to me, but I can still see you as you're supposed to look." Sora blinked then, and chuckled as he shook his head slowly. "It does sound like I'm going insane, doesn't it?"
"It does," agreed Orca, allowing some of his anger to melt away. "But that's probably more of a benefit than a hindrance. Can you do anything with it?"
A 1, a 0, a string shuffled, repeated, shuffled, repeated as it was needed. Within the jumble was a stray fragment, just like the crack but slightly different. This one wasn't as glaring an error, yet it was vibrant enough to be picked up by Sora's watchful eyes. He reached for it, knowing well that he could not touch it, and focused in on it, knowing it was all that mattered. If he could just get his mind around it...
While he strained, Orca seemed to catch onto what it was he had looked upon. He scrunched his brow and came closer, nearly pressing his face against the wall that bound them. "Hey, what is that...?"
Sora may not have known it but it was what he did: streaming energy into what he saw to bring it to light, pulling that which was obscure into visibility. When he looked at Orca it was lost, and he felt as if something had been physically wretched off him - a disconnection that made him gasp for breath, and shake his head to clear it away of a fuzziness that overtook him. Orca too lost sight of it, for he squinted at the emptiness in which there was a brief presence of blurred gentle white. "You saw it?"
"I saw something."
He grew bolder. Another snatch of code, randomly blended in to its neighboring strings... Little by little he wrapped his knowing consciousness around it and pulled, gently at first. Beside him he heard Orca mumble, "And there's something else." Sora muttered through clenched teeth, "Concentrate on it." He could feel the fragment separate bit by bit from the surrounding code, gently eased away from where it was meant to be. Then finally it was free; they heard a deep crackle, like cans being trampled, and they both were flung back. There was nothing left to pull. When they sat up, they saw what looked like a sharp convex dent in the wall where the fragment had been.
Orca rubbed a palm against his forehead. "Did... we just do that?"
"I think we did." Sora was quick to return to his feet, for now he had a renewed purpose: if they could do that, as insignificant as it might have been... "Looks like we've got hope after all. Come on, we have to find it. I think we can break it open if we try hard enough."
He started to walk. Within the staff there was no true up or down, left or right: it all blurred into a single plane with ambiguous boundaries. But if his position could have been pinpointed from the outside, one would have seen him walking up the side of the staff, following the curve of the circular portion. Orca trailed behind, still trying to harness the ability to see beyond what was there with little success.
"There!" he heard Sora cry from somewhere head. Sora was kneeling and staring down (wherever down was; technically, he was staring out) at something. When Orca came close enough he could see a white ripple that was just barely translucent enough to be seen. "Hurry! This is it!"
It looked very much like a tear in fabric with crystalline shapes hanging about its ragged edges. Through it he could see blackness but it was a blackness without numbers: outside, perhaps? That alone was enough to send him on his knees beside Sora and to try manipulating it as they had the fragment before. This one was slippery, difficult to grasp. The strain on Sora's face was evident and Orca was almost convinced that he could smell perspiration, yet the crack did not seem do budge.
"It's... not going to move," grunted Orca. "Not in, anyway..."
"Then try pushing out," Sora grunted back. Their minds became battering rams, slamming against a door that refused to be open. First Sora pushed, then Orca did, taking on a frantic rhythm that was quickly rewarded: they felt it give away ever so slightly, but that was enough to give them strength. "It's working!"
Their efforts doubled in an instant. Soon the difference became noticeable, palpable; the space around the opening began to shy away at their force, shrinking further out and taking their door with it. Shape held no meaning: Orca no longer looked as Orca did, Sora no longer looked as Sora did. Everything was a blur of light and dark, and they were rushing out for the night.
The system is a finite thing, it must be: only so much can exist within a given area, just as a balloon can only contain so much gas. If so much data were to be forced through... No longer was it a matter of opening the door as it was a matter of simply breaking through it... So he pushed. He pushed with all the might he could muster; surely a high concentration of data trying to spill through a defined exit point would force it to open, surely...
Tearing, something was tearing, being ripped apart. Orca was yelling something but Sora could not hear over an explosion of crackling, a world around them being shredded away. Except it wasn't anything around them, and Orca wasn't simply yelling.
There was a barrier of some sort: his efforts were pulled to a halt, but that did not deter him: he pushed even harder, holding fast to the idea that his freedom was at hand. The crackling intensified into separate distinct noises, deafening crashes and booms. He became aware of the hot blue bolts that were dancing across him, pouring in from the tear, aware of lines of pain they drew upon him. Orca was screaming and his voice, thick with pain and terror, became garbled and subhuman. The mass heaved forth one final time until it moved no longer. The static disappeared, and where once there was chaotic noise there was silence. Sora was still pressed against it when he realized that it was no longer what it used to be. The area around the crack had taken on a greenish tinge, the crack itself was filled with a charred black mass. Ash was spread all around him, covering the place in a thin-splotched sheet.
Orca was gone.
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The ECG was going crazy. On the floor the remnants of a broken vase tangled up with the stems of lilacs, the most recent gift from a family member who had stopped by minutes earlier. The body on the bed was supposed to be still and peaceful, but this was nothing of the sort. The nurse could see the eyes rolling about beneath the eyelids, and she most certainly could see how heavily he was breathing. Never mind the seizures that racked his body: his arms flailed, hands clutched sheets until the knuckles where snowy white. She was pushing the page button on a small strip that hung beside the head of the bed but no one had come, but it had only been seconds. Seconds felt like an eternity that fluttered past with the bat of eyelashes.
The young man sucked in his last breath and expelled it as he sank back onto the mattress. His eyes snapped open and stared balefully at the ceiling, blind and gray and scared. The monitor had already flat lined.
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He was moving, barely. Small hands grasped at things no one could see. The blips on the machines all seemed to have decided to speed up but the increase was barely noticeable: nothing more than numbers rising higher on the scale than they had previously been. Something was happening, that much was evident.
Throughout their room there was a heavy sense of disassociation. Life, or the essence of it, was primarily absent: machinations pumped fluids in and pulled fluids out, and did the same for oxygen. Without them, the child would die and yet no one knew why or how. Games were never meant to steal lives.
A chair sat beside the bed that smelled of sweat and tears. Beside one of its legs was a box of tissues toppled over on its side, and against the wall was a small trash bin half full of crumpled white fluffs. An sat there with her hands folded in her lap, just watching over Hiroshi's face. Reading the intricacies of a rise in his brow, a twitch of his lip.
"I wonder what he's doing in there," Megumi thought aloud. A small couch sat beside a window, recently moved in by the nurses. They said it was for Hiroshi's mother but they had not even seen any signs of her. "Maybe he's wandering around The World like you were..."
"He must be scared," Akiko said. She had raven's eyes, curiously blank yet eerily knowing of everything that had occurred and has yet to occur around her. They stared at one of Hiroshi's twitching hands, at the junction where artificial veins intruded into those within him. "Must be horrible where the only thing you can't do is get out."
"He is. It is," spoke An. "You can take in everything The World has to offer and some more, but you can never leave... We have to get him out."
Kazuhiro nudged his glasses further up on his nose, and one could swear that they saw thoughts coagulate within his eyes. "Is it even possible? Yours was a special case, An. You were tied to Aura. She's awake now, isn't she? Maybe Sora doesn't have a key of his own."
"What about that monster?" Eyes turned to Isshin, who was leaned up against a corner of the room. "I got the impression that that was an abnormality in the system, sort of like Aura. What if we found the monster and defeated it?"
"We'd be a little late for that," said Shinichiro. "People posted stuff on the BBS about that monster but from what I understand, it's already been taken care of. Nobody's seen it or any signs of it for a good while now."
"There's always a way. I can't let him stay in there by himself," An said, tearing her attention away from Hiroshi to scan over the others. "I want to go back into The World and find him. There has to be a way to help."
"Then I guess me and Isshin-kun will be right back," Shinichiro detached himself from the wall near the door where he had been standing, gesturing for Isshin to follow him. "Gonna need your keys." The two walked out from the room and headed towards the elevator.
"Where are they going?" asked Megumi.
Mariko pulled herself up beside the window. It overlooked the front parking lot, and it was easy to spot Isshin's van out from the sparse population of considerably smaller (and much more attractive) vehicles. "Shinichiro-san has work later today... I think Isshin-san agreed to drop him off there, so Shinichiro-san brought his briefcase with him..."
"Dragging a laptop around, no doubt," snickered Akiko. "Shouldn't be a surprise if he has The World installed on there. Looks like you'll be able to plug right in, An."
The two men returned shortly with a suitcase and another smaller bag. There was a small table set aside beside the chair An sat in, and in a matter of minutes it was occupied with a sleek looking laptop and a headset. Shinichiro looked rather proud of the little machine. "Good thing I went for the high-end stuff, huh? Fun times on those long boring business trips."
"Aww man, how morbid is this?" Megumi was grumbling, moving to keep a lookout at the room's door. "The nurse is gonna flip if she sees a bunch of weirdoes playing a game in a coma patient's room..."
Kazuhiro set a hand on An's shoulder, warily eyeing the laptop. The ALTIMIT OS desktop was already loaded and the icon for The World spun invitingly on the screen. "Be careful in there, An-chan... Don't take any unnecessary risks."
She looked up at him and for the second that their eyes met there was recognition: a father knew the risks a daughter was undertaking, and a daughter knew she had a father who cared. An smiled at her guardian, nodding before she set the headset into place. "Wish me luck."
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Mac Anu was just as he* remembered, pastel and beautiful beneath a gentle sun. There was a little bit of regret in that he could not longer there for long: there was a soul to be found and he knew it would not be there in the root town.
Once the door had been unlocked it could be opened at any time. The way to "Mother's" domain had no keywords, not in the conventional sense. It was all a matter of reaching out to the Chaos Gate and remembering; fear, sickness, the wasting away of something that could have, at one point or another, been considered alive. Tsukasa remembered that place, and then he was there.
It, however, had changed. All of the color from the surrounding scenery had been drained into monochrome grays and blacks, and the very nature of the place felt different. The horizon was empty and flat. From the ground rose two walls tall enough to be from a standard house, and they joined at one corner to strengthen that illusion. There was wallpaper on the interior side with the wisps of coiled brushstrokes belonging to a dreamy painter scattered across it. Against one wall sat a desk, and against the other was a bed. Over the desk was a window but through it was the deepest shade of matte black he had ever seen. Both the bed and the desk were empty, as was the rest of the domain as far as he knew. He walked to the desk and touched it, brushing his fingertips against a material that did not feel like wood at all, and he noticed that one of the drawers was open by just a crack. When he moved to open it, he was stopped by a voice coming from behind his shoulder.
"Tsukasa-kun," it said with an almost dream-like quality to it; a voice he could not hear in the sense of having an actual solid voice behind it, but he still acknowledged its presence.
Tsukasa turned around and was faced with what very well may have been a ghost. It had no true shape or substance, but it had pale translucent numbers and symbols encircling it, permeating it like mobile tattoos. It must have recognized the look of confusion on Tsukasa's face, for it bobbed once in what was suggested, by a phantom whisper, to be an apology. The marks brightened and circled around faster and faster until it looked like a shred of white that had gotten lost in the land of gray. Little by little the shape became more human, and much more familiar. The bulges at the shoulder and hips, as well as lengthy bangs and bandanna tails... Then the white disappeared, and the avatar Sora wore took on faded shades of the colors he once possessed. "Is this better?"
Initially relief washed over Tsukasa, but it was a notion short-lived given the situation: either this was not Sora at all, or something very bad had happened. "Sora...? Have you been here all this time?"
Sora shrugged and grinned crudely; apparently he thought little of what was going on, if anything was going on at all. "Off and on. I've been around."
It seemed at first that Sora was much taller than he had been when Tsukasa met him face to face for the first time, but he quickly realized that Sora's feet weren't touching the ground. "We were all getting worried... For a while we thought that maybe you just stopped playing, but then we heard-"
"Worried?" Sora echoed, sounding strangely hollow. "You were worried about me?"
"Well yeah, why wouldn't I be?"
"You've been gone for so long..."
"Yeah... I'm really sorry about that. Things have been kind of hectic... I moved in with Bear, you know. And getting into a new school, adjusting to everything... I suppose I haven't had a lot of time to log on anymore."
Sora's eyes softened, dropping away from the wavemaster's face to stare somewhere behind him. "You forgot your promise."
"Promise?"
"We were going to be friends."
Tsukasa thought he could hear sadness in Sora's voice. filtered through a quiet matter-of-factness. He nodded after some thought, recalling traces of memory: they had spoken of friendship the day he was freed. "I really would like to be your friend. I'd like to help you too, just like you helped me."
"I don't need your help. I'm already out."
Surprise and confusion. Tsukasa cocked his head to the side. "Out?"
Sora didn't seem to hear Tsukasa's question. His eyes dimmed just noticeably, still refusing to settle upon the wavemaster's form. "You're a little late now. How long has it been? I can't tell anymore."
"Why don't you go back?"
"Go back?"
"To the real world, I mean. If you're out...?"
The green-haired youth chanced a look at Tsukasa, and was met with frightful eyes. He saw concern there, glassed over and crystallized into violet. "Because... I don't want to."
"Sora, can you feel this?"
"Feel what?"
"I'm holding your hand."
Stares. Lies? Sora couldn't tell. Tsukasa's face said nothing that hadn't already been said no matter how hard he tried to read it. "No you're not," he said, though he was not sure if he could believe himself.
"Everybody is here with you," said Tsukasa. "We met up at Bear's... Kazuhiro-san's. We ate lunch and we talked and we wondered what happened to Sora and why we couldn't get in touch with him." The figure before him drooped slightly, disbelieving; confusion overtook his features and his lips mouthed soundless 'no's. "And then we found you here. This used to be my room, my bed, my medicines and my needles.... We want to help you, Sora. Hiroshi."
(Recognition of a name: syllables and symbols attached to a body, a body that lies too still to be alive but not still enough to be dead. Hiroshi Yanaka gasps.)
"You wanted to be friends, right? Let's be friends in the real world. You can come over and we can hang out-"
"I can't go back." A shred of strength and defiance glistens cold in his eyes, hidden away in the sudden surge of fear. "I killed him. They'll get me and they'll kill me."
That was not what Tsukasa thought he was going to say. He watched Sora, speechless for many long moments until finally he coaxed a quiet, "What?" through his throat.
"Orca. Yasuhiko. She caught him and I killed him. He's not there anymore, I can't feel him." Lost again. His focus fell away from Tsukasa, dwindling up to the ceiling. "I can't feel him there or anywhere else."
Tsukasa looked up too and saw it: a black smear that could have been liquid at one point in time. It could be seen around the light fixture that hung there, spreading out like water from a leaky roof except it was matte with flecks of silvery splinters scattered throughout. That... couldn't have been what he thought it was. Literally killing someone through the game? He could feel his pulse thudding in his ears. "We can talk about that after-"
"No." When Tsukasa tore his eyes away from the ceiling Sora's were waiting to grab hold, the dark wine-pools that for the first time ever made him think of blood. "You know. You saw it fit to leave me here, I don't think you'll mind turning me in."
"Hiroshi, please-"
Sora stepped closer, his hands snapping around Tsukasa's wrists. Out of reflex Tsukasa tried to back away, twisting his arms to try and wiggle out of his grasp but it was no use: iron hands clenched tight, and the wavemaster was only tugged closer. The fear had drained out of Sora's face, replaced by a calm that in itself was more frightening than Tsukasa could have ever imagined. The comforts of knowing something that your company did not... He smiled, speaking in a soft voice. "You'll keep your promise all right. I'll keep mine, too. Hold still."
One of his hands was released but before he could try and break away again he felt something cold and sharp pressed against his throat. A chill ran throughout his body, numbing every extremity, and he heard/felt/saw the harsh crackle of static eating away at his vision. Sora was there until the black swept in, smile bleak as bones.
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An jolts upright, tossing her head back to stare at the line where the wall met the ceiling. In an instant all is silent and all is noisy once more, a half dozen uncertain voices speaking out to one who could not hear them. The girl at her side squeezes her hand, praying for a response. Blood trickles from an unseen wound on An's throat. Then she begins to slip and fall, tipping to the side in slow motion. She hits the floor before anyone realizes what is happening, before her guardian can reach down and catch her. They hear the impact of a lifeless body on linoleum, and then they know: An Shouji might not get back up.
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[[ Edit 12-9-03: more spelling, grammar, etc.
* seat belts are pretty awesome :) (the group, too; go cowboy bebop!)
* yes, I know the truth behind Tsukasa, but since Tsukasa IS a male character in the game, I shall refer him to male ]]