Phoneix From the Ashes

Chapter 4

by Bottou-chan

recca.lamssu.net

Dinner that night, at the Uruha apartment, seemed as normal as any other night.

"So, what did you do today, kids?" asked Neon, in between bites.

"Excellent cooking as always," said Joker, helping himself to take-out sashimi.

"Talked to Fuuko this morning," said Raiha casually.

"Ooh," said Neon, with some concern. "Poor girl. Which approach did you use?"

"I figured it would be better if I did the cold routine," said Raiha. "It wasn't much, but I think it may have been kind of harsh."

"It's for the best," said Joker sensibly. "It's easier to leave someone hating your guts, than it is to have them pining for you forever. I can't tell you the number of girls I have out there pining for me—"

There was a deadly swishing noise as Raiha drew his katana from its sheath and pointed it across the table. The very tip of it rested gently against Joker's throat. He eyed it dubiously.

"If you want me to pass the rice, Raiha, you can ask me nicely…"

"I'm telling you, Joker, if this is just some game of yours, I'll kill you."

There was no playfulness in Raiha's lethal eyes.

"Jokes are all about the fine art of timing," said Joker loftily. "You think it's funny to drag a joke out for this long? Hardly."

"You know what I want to know. Start talking," said Raiha. The blade never wavered.

His teammate heaved an exhausted sigh, as though having to explain himself was an unbearable burden. "All right," he said. "Just put that thing away before you hurt someone. But it's going to be a long story. You ready?"

"Try me," said Raiha.

Neon had remained silent through the exchange, but she leaned forward to catch every word.

"All right. I'll start at the beginning," said Joker. "Me and Koganei, right? We're together. Unfinished business, you know how that goes? Anyhow, we get interrupted by this one little girl, who's really an old woman, who really doesn't know how old she is because she keeps switching ages. Kirito, was it? Right. So we take care of that. Everything's fine and dandy, and then Kadotsu shows up on the scene."

"Right," agreed Neon. "That's what I heard."

"So, anyhow, Kadotsu shows up. You have to remember that Kurei already toasted him, right? He survived, which is amazing in and of itself. But if you think for one moment that *I* could be toasted by one of Mori's half-baked goons, you've got to be kidding. I'm way too cool to go like that."

"So I hear," said Raiha dryly. He no longer held his friend at swordpoint, but each at the table knew that the danger had in no way passed.

"But, anyhow, this Kadotsu was pretty amazingly tenacious. Just wouldn't die. I tossed a few ideas around, tried a little of this, a little of that… Didn't work."

"So you made a black hole," said Neon.

"Wrong!" said Joker. "That's what I said I did, but, come on. Think back to science class. Any object can become a black hole, if it becomes small enough and dense enough. Like, for instance, if we squeezed this whole honkin' planet into a teeny-tiny ball, like, say, the size of a marble---- it would become a black hole. The more massive an object is, the stronger its gravity becomes. But that's the whole point. A black hole is an object… usually, say, a star that's collapsed in upon itself. But you can't have a black hole made out of thin air. Remember that everything's mostly empty space, anyways, if you think about it on the molecular level. A black hole is something enormous that's condensed into something really tiny. That's where the pull of the gravity comes from. You need both gravity and matter to create a black hole."

"I… see…" said Neon slowly. "So, tell me. If you didn't create a black hole, what did you create?"

"I used this little baby," said Joker, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small, round object.

Neon and Raiha gaped.

"That's a madougu!" she whispered, picking it up to examine it. "But--- I thought--- they all self-destructed."

"Almost all," smirked Joker. "That's not just any madogu. That's the Jigan Kaigyoku."

"The Jigan Kaigyoku?" repeated Raiha, leaning over to peer at it as well. "Wasn't that what Magensha—"

"Bingo!" said Joker. "The pieces are falling into place, ne?"

"Was it not destroyed when Magensha was?" asked Neon, still hardly daring to believe that an intact madougu still existed in the world.

"Do you really think Kurei would have allowed something so valuable to be destroyed in the process of killing such a worm?" The scorn dripped from Joker's voice. "Magensha's life was hardly something to worry over. He was just one of Mori's pawns. Now, this madougu, on the other hand, is something very precious. J-Kipa retrieved it when he executed the old schemer. Sure, it was a bit chipped from Magensha's bumbling around, but not totally ruined."

"And you got it from J-Kipa?" The puzzle began to take shape.

"Bingo again, Raiha!" he beamed. "J-Kipa was just another wannabe, but nothing like the real thing. He was disposable. Too caught up in his own self-importance to realize he was just being used. Thought he was invincible, and it led to a sticky end. He had the Jigan Kaigyoku on him, and I picked it up when I was checking him over after our little run-in with him--- Saicho, Koganei, and I, I mean."

"Yes, I remember hearing that story," said Neon.

"So, anyhow, I've kept the Jigan Kaigyoku on me for safekeeping. I kept it for backup, in case Mori Tsukino needed to beat a hasty retreat to an impenetrable hiding place, back when the Nincompoops and I were running guard duty."

"Makes sense," said Raiha. "I was about to ask how you managed to survive pilfering of that degree."

"It's not pilfering," said Joker, looking as honorable as he could manage. "It's merely finding a convenient place as to how my interests and Kurei's interests intersect."

"So, go on," prodded Neon. "I'm seeing where this is going… but I want to hear it from you."

"Right. So, anyhow. Back to the fight. I'm working Kadotsu over, and he's not giving in. So I do a final gravity blast, and open up a portal with the Jigan Kaigyoku. Both of us get sucked in there. I left my Taishaku Kaiten behind; that was an accident. But I needed my hands free, you know? Not to mention, it was in need of some major cleaning. I don't usually work so messily. Still, now I wish I hadn't, because it would be really useful to have around the house. Like getting cobwebs from those hard-to-reach places in the ceiling corners."

"You're so tall, I don't think you have anything to worry about ceiling corners," said Neon mildly. "Go on with the real story."

"Oh. Right. So, once I get Kadotsu into my dimension, it's no problem to finish him off. He's half-fried from meeting Kurei, tired out from our fight, and scared stiff at being transported into a totally different Dimension. I take care of him, no more worries from that direction. I thought about coming back, but I figured what the heck. I'd never really explored the Dimension too thoroughly; I was always busy with one thing or another. No time for leisurely exploration. Maybe the gaping stomach wound had something to do with it. So, I took things easy for a bit. Guessed I was going to live after a while. And since I figured I'd missed all the fun by then, I decided what the heck. I wandered around. Saw the sights. Found Magensha's old lookout point. Thought about erecting a historical landmark sign. And—" his voice dropped dramatically "—I found something even more interesting."

"Which was?" asked Neon and Raiha in nearly the same breath.

Even Joker was leaning forward now; their three heads were nearly touching.

"The Dimension was more than just an empty void that you get lost in until you die. It has a ton of these gates. I don't think Magensha ever found them. I think he was always too busy playing it safe from his cauldron to properly explore the Dimension. It's why he wasn't Jyushinshuu--- he wasn't able to harness a fraction of his madougu's potential."

"And these—gates?"

Joker kicked back in his chair, obviously enjoying being the center of attention.

"They lead into other places. Other worlds. Other realities."

"Now you're kidding," said Raiha flatly. He reached once more for his katana.

Joker shook his head hastily. "No, no! I'm serious! I even went poking around. I had a blast. Anyhow, you wouldn't believe it, but I was in this one place, and who do you think I run into? It's Kurei! With little Koganei tagging along! Well, not little Koganei anymore, if you understand, because he's grown considerably, but you know what I mean."

"Make it good, Joker," said Raiha.

"See, this is why I didn't want to tell you. It sounds stupid when you have to spell it out. You had to be there," said Joker, pouting. "Anyhow, that was what I asked him—funny meeting you here. Come here often? and all that. So, after he griped about his revenge for an hour, he told me that he had used the Jigan Kaigyoku himself to visit the Dimension as well."

"He did what?" asked Neon, puzzled.

"He used the Jigan Kaigyoku, in his time period. He was the one who had tracked it down, so he knew where to find it. You think he wants to be stuck in the feudal past for the rest of his life? He'd been there already. Wasn't too hot the first time around. Not worth sticking around for once his mission was accomplished, anyways. So he came to the Dimension as the easiest way out, and found some stuff to occupy his time. I happened to cross paths with him while he was doing interesting stuff, and we chitchatted, and conversation turned to you guys."

"But there's two problems with that," said Raiha slowly. "The first problem is, if he had the Jigan Kaigyoku, how did you have one as well? Because there's just one madougu, but for the two of them to coexist in the same space at the same time—"

"That's what they call a paradox, my friend," said Joker. "That's why you don't mess with the timeline. I tried to point that out, but you know how focused he can be on one thing, that he ignores everything else."

Raiha was clearly unconvinced. "And the second thing… the time thing. If Kurei entered the Dimension four hundred years ago, how did you run across him in—another world—" he mumbled those words as though it was too ridiculous to say clearly "—instead of, say, him preceding you by four hundred years in the same world you both visited?"

"Time's not a constant," said Joker simply. "Time's a dimension of reality all its own. Look at the Time Manipulation technique. Think of time like a rubber band. Time can be long and skinny. Or time can be short and fat. If you have two lengths of rubber band that each equal five minutes, and you take one rubber band and stretch it as far as it will go… it's still five minutes, yet it's three time as long as the other five minutes. Put that on an infinite scale for Time, and you have a full-scale model. The thing is, Time's kind of like a river. It wants to go in one direction. If you try to mess with it, it'll just flow right over you. But if you go about it the right way, you can anchor yourself to a point in the river, or paddle upstream, or even change its course completely. Time's as versatile as water, yet people rarely have the tools to be able to manipulate it properly."

Raiha eyed him sideways. "So… do either of you have the tools to manipulate it properly?"

"Let's just say that a hidden dimension is an excellent place for a secure storage facility," smirked Joker. He laid claim to the last piece of sashimi and popped it into his mouth.

"So there's madougu?"

"Lots of madougu!" said Joker, his voice growing more and more excited at the memory. "See, this madougu didn't get destroyed, because I was in a totally different dimension when the other self-destructed. The other madougu in the other Dimension… the other madougu in the other worlds… those were also spared."

The three exchanged a glance. The excitement and enthusiasm were rapidly building.

"There's so much cool stuff out there, the possibilities are endless," said Joker. "You won't believe how many times since I've been back that I've been on the verge of just running back there and staying. It's such a cool place. But it got kind of lonely the first time around, so I figured I'd come and drag you guys back for a little fun and excitement. And running into Kurei—well, he has a way of making life interesting."

"So what have we been waiting around here for all this time?" asked Neon, rolling the Jigan Kaigyoku back across the table. Joker caught it and slipped it back into his pocket.

"I don't want to run the risk of missing Kurei," he said apologetically. "I can't tell where he is, or what he's doing when he's not in the Dimension itself. When he does leave the world he's in, and comes back to the Dimension, though, I'll know. The master of the Jigan Kaigyoku knows when they have company. They may not know exactly where… but the moment someone enters the Dimension, the master knows. Seeing that Kurei and I both have the same madougu, we'll both know when the time has come. That's a good thing, since the Dimension is rather large, and it's not like you can leave a sticky-note on the door."

Neon nodded vigorously. "I understand," she said, but deep down, they were all sharing the same thought.

It was nice to wait for Kurei, and all, but if he took too long to return to the meeting place, they may well have an adventure or two without him.

They would meet up eventually.