Kodoku no Fortress
Hour VI
By Spirit-hime
Brown. That was the color of the vast stretches of the sun-baked grass. Or was it perhaps a shade closer to dun? One thing was certain: it was most definitely not green.
The tanish ground rolled for miles in every direction, unbroken in its journey towards the distant horizon. Clouds dappled the azure sky, sending autumn-yellowed streams of sunshine shooting through their billowy mounds, warming the already deadened grass. Such an empty expanse of land. It must surely have been a desert, or at the very least, some kind of prairie. It most certainly was not anywhere near Tokyo.
An empty, deserted land. Where the sky, in its measurelessly sprawling borders, was easily mirrored by its terrestrial counterpart in all its vast, undisturbed glory. It rolled by, wave after wave of gently sloping hills, of unaltered flatness, of unadulterated plainness. Here and there an oddity would come into sight: a squat tree, twisted and gnarled in the wind; an ancient shed, its wood long faded and crumbling; the skeleton of a truck, so rusted and overgrown with weeds that it appeared to have sprung out of the ground like a mutated dandelion. Such sights were sparse; islands in a never-ending sea. They appeared suddenly, and vanished just as fast.
Setsuna knew this kind of bleakness well. She understood it. It was the emptiness of a thousand years, the isolation of an island in a sea of mist. She felt a sort of contentment as she watched the emptiness slide by, knowing that this time, she was not a part of it. That she was perfectly protected from that desolation in her little shell, sitting at a nice little cafe table, a paper cup of earl gray in her hand.
She took a small sip of the tea, reveling in its warm, comfortable taste. She held it cupped in both hands, absorbing the warmth between her fingers. There was a friendly sort of murmur from the passengers around her as they chatted with one another at similar little tables, drinking from similar paper cups, reading from crinkling newspapers.
She had found herself here, one of many faceless people on a classy passenger train. Her outfit had once again changed, and she was now dressed in a long black coat with buttons down the front, with black pants and a maroon top underneath. Unlike the other worlds she had turned up in, she felt no initial sense of confusion, nor did she allow herself to become lost in it. She was Meiou Setsuna, resident of 20th-century Tokyo, Japan, Earth, and she had no intention of forgetting that any time soon. She was through with aimlessly stumbling from place to place, through with forgetting every event that occurred from one moment to the next. It was time she took matters into her own hands, time she followed the path instead of waiting to be led.
It was time she started taking control of her place in time.
It was the key that had brought her here. The key had been leading her everywhere until this point, dragging her from one time to the next through some personal agenda of its own. But this time it did not pull her along, dropping her unceremoniously in some random place, only to depart again. This time she willingly followed it, allowing it to lead her where it would. It softly beckoned to her, called her to the place it wanted. When the time was right, it whispered to her that it was, and coaxed her to go on ahead. This she did, and now she was here.
She was not sure what the key was after, but she was beginning to hazard a guess. There were far too many coincidences going on here. Her birthday. The Key of the Ferryman. The Akuma Neko. And him. The man in the dungeon. The figure in the picture book. They were him, and yet not him. Rather, they were like shadows of him, like pieces of the whole. When she came to this realization, she reached a tentative, yet drastic conclusion. If Oroszlan is alive... if the lioness never died in the first place...
Who's to say that he ever did?
She was reaching, she knew. For a powerful shapeshifting demoness to survive after all this time was one thing, but a human--even a powerful one--was an entirely different matter. The very idea that he could have lived after that day was almost unthinkable. Factor in issues such as why he would go so long without trying to contact her, and you could pretty much kiss that theory goodbye. But...
But she so wanted it to be true. Even if it wasn't, even if there was no way in a million years that it could ever occur... as long as there was that single glimmer of hope, she had to believe in the possibility of it. She had to try. To find out for sure. And the only way to do that was to follow the key.
Even if it meant her hope would be dashed? Yes, even then.
Hope was an oddly refreshing feeling for her. It was something she seldom felt. Certainty was a constant in Setsuna's life. The certainty of time. The certainty of change. The certainty of the future. Even in the darkest moments in battle, when it seemed that all would be lost, never did her faith in Princess Serenity, in the future she would bring, begin to waver. That, too, was a certainty. Crystal Tokyo was a certainty. But now, she had something better than certainty. She had hope. To her, hope felt adventurous. Even devious.
"'Scuse me, miss. Is this seat taken?"
Setsuna gave a friendly, knowing smile to the man who stood next to her. "You're right on time."
"Am I?" Amusement played in his voice as he slid into the chair across from her. His bright, coal-black eyes sparkled with it. He ran a hand through his unusual hair--a scruffy tangle of dusty green with a white stripe running down the center.
She nodded sagely. "I was just thinking about how nice it would be if a young man would come over and talk to me, and here you are!"
"Well I'm hardly one to keep a lady waiting."
"I should hope not. It seems to me that a great many ladies would wait for one such as you, sir."
"Hoards of them. Makes one horribly busy, you know."
Setsuna raised an eyebrow. "Well then, I should be thankful that you ever found time for an ordinary woman such as myself."
"You are anything but ordinary, my dear."
"Are you always this flirtatious?"
"Are you?"
With a soft smirk, the green-haired woman reached across the table, offering her hand. "Meiou Setsuna."
He shook it. His hand was warm, his grip firm but gentle, his skin soft but callused. "Kurogawa Kado. So where are you headed, Ms. Meiou?"
"I'm on a journey to visit my past."
"No, what you're -on- is a journey to visit your future. The past is back that way." He pointed behind her, never losing his casual grin. "You can't exactly be going back in time, now can you?"
She tilted her head at him, curious. "Really? Is the memory not a kind of time machine? Can't you revisit past experiences in your mind?"
"Ah, well you should be more specific, then. A memory is a mere shadow of the past. It's nothing but an old photograph. You cannot visit a photograph."
For a moment, Setsuna lost her gentle smile. "But to regain memories you thought you lost, that is almost like reliving them. It is like experiencing them all over again. Then too, it is much like visiting them." A whisper of sadness crept into her voice, so soft that many untuned ears would not have picked it up, but it did not go unnoticed by the green-haired stranger. He said nothing, only looked at her with his dark, understanding eyes. She appreciated that. She appreciated that he did not make any false attempts at comfort, that he did not try to fill the empty space with equally empty words. The miles rolled by, filled only with earl gray and a pair of black eyes that she could not stop gazing at.
"Can you tell me, Mr. Kurogawa, why do people forget?"
If the man was surprised by the abrupt question, he did not show it. But Setsuna suspected that he was not surprised. "The same reason that people don't go back to Utah or Nebraska, unless absolutely necessary. You don't visit the places you don't like, just as you don't visit the memories you don't like. Unless something forces you back, you may never see it again."
"And which is better, the remembering or the forgetting?"
"Let me ask you this: which is more painful, that you remembered again, or that you ever forgot in the first place?"
"That's a good question. Is leaving Nebraska a painful experience?"
That remark set him laughing. It was a jubilant, contagious laugh; so much so that other people nearby could not help but smile politely in his direction, though they did not share in the joke. "You've got a tongue on you, Miss Meiou."
The crimson-eyed woman smiled innocently, a carefully manicured fingernail idly bobbing the teabag in its dark brownish liquid. "Do I? I use it so seldom, I'm sure there are some who would believe otherwise."
"Beautiful AND smart. Is there anything you aren't capable of?"
"Well I can't sing. I've established that fact rather recently."
"Too bad. I could listen to your voice all day."
Setsuna licked a drop of tea from her finger, eyes turned towards the window. There was once a time when such a remark could make her blush.
"So, Mr. Kurogawa, you know where I'm headed. Care to indulge me?"
"Ah, well unlike you, Ms. Meiou, I am in no way, shape, or form headed in the direction of my past. In fact, I am very much rushing open-armed towards my future."
"Why the rush? The future will get here when it does. Keep running like that, and before you know it, you'll be dead. That, my friend, is the future that everyone will find, someday."
"Well you see, Ms. Meiou, recently I have found myself quite dissatisfied with my life, as it were, and I'm rather in a hurry to change things."
"I see. But what will you do if you don't like the changes that are made? What if they're bad changes?"
"Change is always good when you live in a world of monotony."
"Is it? You must not live in a very good world, then."
"The world I live in is imperfect. That, I am certain, is a constant that can never be changed. However, there are some changes I wish to find, if indeed they will allow themselves to be found."
"Oh, but there is one factor which you overlook. The greatest constant of all is change. Empires are built and destroyed. People, creatures, stars are all born, and all of them someday die. Galaxies are formed, and they too are destroyed. Change is ever-present, even for those who fail to see it."
"Indeed, but I have found that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Change is nothing but an endless cycle. The same old steps are replayed over and over, with little to differentiate one from another."
The flat, desolate land rolled by like an endless tide. In the distance, the sun could be seen streaming down in golden beams that shone between the clouds, giving a mystical sort of shine to the otherwise dull setting.
"In a way," the man continued, "nothing ever changes."
"Then why not break the cycle?" The question came out a little more harshly than Setsuna intended. She could not imagine why this pseudo-philosophical conversation even mattered to her, or why she felt so defiant of the strange man's position.
He gave a small smirk, a quick, agreeing nod. "That," Mr. Kurogawa said simply, "is exactly my point."
The train was beginning to slow, as it approached the next stop. The green-haired man glanced at his watch.
"Well, Ms. Meiou, it has been a pleasure, but I'm afraid my stop is coming up."
"Oh," breathed Setsuna, remembering something. "Could you tell me the time, please?"
"It's six o'clock," Kado said absentmindedly, draping his coat over one arm. He looked up at her again, swallowing her with those ebony eyes. "Perhaps we'll meet again someday."
"Perhaps." Setsuna extended a slender hand across the table. "Wonderful to meet you, Mr. Kurogawa."
He reached out, accepting it. "The feeling is mutual Ms. Me--" The words died in his throat as her hand clasped his, but before he could pull it back, she had already clamped down on it with sailor senshi strength. His entire body went rigid, and he was staring at Setsuna with what could only be described as surprise. The garnet-eyed woman watched him calmly, the only sign of effort on her part being the white knuckles that showed on her hand. Their hands felt warm and soft against each other, and anyone watching them may have thought they were two lovers who were holding one another tight as they gazed into each other's eyes. But no onlooker would have seen the piece of cold, hard stone that rested between their two palms. The greyish-black stone that had been carved into the shape of a tiny key.
The man's eyes trailed down to the two hands that were clasped between them on the table, but a few attempted tugs seemed to tell him that he would be unable to release himself without causing a scene. When he looked back up at Setsuna, all traces of surprise had left him, and he even gave her a bit of a devious, knowing smirk.
"Not playing by the rules, are you Ms. Meiou?"
Setsuna smiled sweetly. "How can I play by the rules if I do not even know what game I'm in, Mr. Kurogawa?"
"The game? The game you're in could be summed up as a complicated version of cat and mouse, I suppose. The question, of course, is which are you? The cat or the mouse?"
"I'd like the answer to that, myself. That is one of my many questions."
"What is it you're after, Ms. Meiou?"
"I want answers."
"There aren't any. That's as much an answer as you'll find."
Setsuna gripped his hand tighter, pushing the cold stone deeper into his flesh. He seemed to wince a little. "That isn't helping, Mr. Kurogawa."
"I don't have your answers, Ms. Meiou."
"Then who does? You know what I'm looking for. You know it, and you know me. Why was I led here if you're no help to me?"
The green-haired man leaned back in his seat, his arm stretched at full length like a leash that he could not be rid of. "Yes, I know what you're after. The person of your past, am I right?" He shook his head. "I'm not the one you're looking for."
"Then who are you?"
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. "Just a piece of the puzzle." He took a breath, glancing around the small car as though to pluck his words out from the ceiling or beneath the tables. "You'll get the answers you're looking for at the river Acheroin. Pay the ferryman his fare, then ride upstream to the place where sorrows begin. You'll know what to do from there."
Setsuna nodded, mentally recording the cryptic directions for later.
"Setsuna," he looked at her directly, calling her by her given name for the first time, "you should also know this. The color blue is more dangerous than it seems. The lioness often shrouds her fangs beneath the fur of a kitten. At the twelfth hour, look for the rose of tarnished steel. And remember that the key lies in unity."
"Any other riddles for me?"
"Nope, I think that's pretty much it." The man's hand slipped from hers as the train slowly chugged to a stop. The empty paper cup of earl grey toppled over and rolled to the floor. "It's been lovely, Ms. Meiou, but I'm afraid I must get off here."
"So must I. Goodbye, Mr. Kurogawa." Her hand closed around the small object in her palm. He gave her a passing nod, then turned to join the ranks of other people who were filing out.
The last she saw of him was the back of his greenish head, before the man, the passengers, the train, vanished from her sight, and Meiou Setsuna was alone again.
----------
(cough) Sorry it's taken me so long to update this. Even I was beginning to think that I may never get back to it. Thank you to everyone who has been patient with me, and who sticks with this fic despite its oddities. We're halfway through it, guys, and we may just get to the end yet!
Hour VI
By Spirit-hime
Brown. That was the color of the vast stretches of the sun-baked grass. Or was it perhaps a shade closer to dun? One thing was certain: it was most definitely not green.
The tanish ground rolled for miles in every direction, unbroken in its journey towards the distant horizon. Clouds dappled the azure sky, sending autumn-yellowed streams of sunshine shooting through their billowy mounds, warming the already deadened grass. Such an empty expanse of land. It must surely have been a desert, or at the very least, some kind of prairie. It most certainly was not anywhere near Tokyo.
An empty, deserted land. Where the sky, in its measurelessly sprawling borders, was easily mirrored by its terrestrial counterpart in all its vast, undisturbed glory. It rolled by, wave after wave of gently sloping hills, of unaltered flatness, of unadulterated plainness. Here and there an oddity would come into sight: a squat tree, twisted and gnarled in the wind; an ancient shed, its wood long faded and crumbling; the skeleton of a truck, so rusted and overgrown with weeds that it appeared to have sprung out of the ground like a mutated dandelion. Such sights were sparse; islands in a never-ending sea. They appeared suddenly, and vanished just as fast.
Setsuna knew this kind of bleakness well. She understood it. It was the emptiness of a thousand years, the isolation of an island in a sea of mist. She felt a sort of contentment as she watched the emptiness slide by, knowing that this time, she was not a part of it. That she was perfectly protected from that desolation in her little shell, sitting at a nice little cafe table, a paper cup of earl gray in her hand.
She took a small sip of the tea, reveling in its warm, comfortable taste. She held it cupped in both hands, absorbing the warmth between her fingers. There was a friendly sort of murmur from the passengers around her as they chatted with one another at similar little tables, drinking from similar paper cups, reading from crinkling newspapers.
She had found herself here, one of many faceless people on a classy passenger train. Her outfit had once again changed, and she was now dressed in a long black coat with buttons down the front, with black pants and a maroon top underneath. Unlike the other worlds she had turned up in, she felt no initial sense of confusion, nor did she allow herself to become lost in it. She was Meiou Setsuna, resident of 20th-century Tokyo, Japan, Earth, and she had no intention of forgetting that any time soon. She was through with aimlessly stumbling from place to place, through with forgetting every event that occurred from one moment to the next. It was time she took matters into her own hands, time she followed the path instead of waiting to be led.
It was time she started taking control of her place in time.
It was the key that had brought her here. The key had been leading her everywhere until this point, dragging her from one time to the next through some personal agenda of its own. But this time it did not pull her along, dropping her unceremoniously in some random place, only to depart again. This time she willingly followed it, allowing it to lead her where it would. It softly beckoned to her, called her to the place it wanted. When the time was right, it whispered to her that it was, and coaxed her to go on ahead. This she did, and now she was here.
She was not sure what the key was after, but she was beginning to hazard a guess. There were far too many coincidences going on here. Her birthday. The Key of the Ferryman. The Akuma Neko. And him. The man in the dungeon. The figure in the picture book. They were him, and yet not him. Rather, they were like shadows of him, like pieces of the whole. When she came to this realization, she reached a tentative, yet drastic conclusion. If Oroszlan is alive... if the lioness never died in the first place...
Who's to say that he ever did?
She was reaching, she knew. For a powerful shapeshifting demoness to survive after all this time was one thing, but a human--even a powerful one--was an entirely different matter. The very idea that he could have lived after that day was almost unthinkable. Factor in issues such as why he would go so long without trying to contact her, and you could pretty much kiss that theory goodbye. But...
But she so wanted it to be true. Even if it wasn't, even if there was no way in a million years that it could ever occur... as long as there was that single glimmer of hope, she had to believe in the possibility of it. She had to try. To find out for sure. And the only way to do that was to follow the key.
Even if it meant her hope would be dashed? Yes, even then.
Hope was an oddly refreshing feeling for her. It was something she seldom felt. Certainty was a constant in Setsuna's life. The certainty of time. The certainty of change. The certainty of the future. Even in the darkest moments in battle, when it seemed that all would be lost, never did her faith in Princess Serenity, in the future she would bring, begin to waver. That, too, was a certainty. Crystal Tokyo was a certainty. But now, she had something better than certainty. She had hope. To her, hope felt adventurous. Even devious.
"'Scuse me, miss. Is this seat taken?"
Setsuna gave a friendly, knowing smile to the man who stood next to her. "You're right on time."
"Am I?" Amusement played in his voice as he slid into the chair across from her. His bright, coal-black eyes sparkled with it. He ran a hand through his unusual hair--a scruffy tangle of dusty green with a white stripe running down the center.
She nodded sagely. "I was just thinking about how nice it would be if a young man would come over and talk to me, and here you are!"
"Well I'm hardly one to keep a lady waiting."
"I should hope not. It seems to me that a great many ladies would wait for one such as you, sir."
"Hoards of them. Makes one horribly busy, you know."
Setsuna raised an eyebrow. "Well then, I should be thankful that you ever found time for an ordinary woman such as myself."
"You are anything but ordinary, my dear."
"Are you always this flirtatious?"
"Are you?"
With a soft smirk, the green-haired woman reached across the table, offering her hand. "Meiou Setsuna."
He shook it. His hand was warm, his grip firm but gentle, his skin soft but callused. "Kurogawa Kado. So where are you headed, Ms. Meiou?"
"I'm on a journey to visit my past."
"No, what you're -on- is a journey to visit your future. The past is back that way." He pointed behind her, never losing his casual grin. "You can't exactly be going back in time, now can you?"
She tilted her head at him, curious. "Really? Is the memory not a kind of time machine? Can't you revisit past experiences in your mind?"
"Ah, well you should be more specific, then. A memory is a mere shadow of the past. It's nothing but an old photograph. You cannot visit a photograph."
For a moment, Setsuna lost her gentle smile. "But to regain memories you thought you lost, that is almost like reliving them. It is like experiencing them all over again. Then too, it is much like visiting them." A whisper of sadness crept into her voice, so soft that many untuned ears would not have picked it up, but it did not go unnoticed by the green-haired stranger. He said nothing, only looked at her with his dark, understanding eyes. She appreciated that. She appreciated that he did not make any false attempts at comfort, that he did not try to fill the empty space with equally empty words. The miles rolled by, filled only with earl gray and a pair of black eyes that she could not stop gazing at.
"Can you tell me, Mr. Kurogawa, why do people forget?"
If the man was surprised by the abrupt question, he did not show it. But Setsuna suspected that he was not surprised. "The same reason that people don't go back to Utah or Nebraska, unless absolutely necessary. You don't visit the places you don't like, just as you don't visit the memories you don't like. Unless something forces you back, you may never see it again."
"And which is better, the remembering or the forgetting?"
"Let me ask you this: which is more painful, that you remembered again, or that you ever forgot in the first place?"
"That's a good question. Is leaving Nebraska a painful experience?"
That remark set him laughing. It was a jubilant, contagious laugh; so much so that other people nearby could not help but smile politely in his direction, though they did not share in the joke. "You've got a tongue on you, Miss Meiou."
The crimson-eyed woman smiled innocently, a carefully manicured fingernail idly bobbing the teabag in its dark brownish liquid. "Do I? I use it so seldom, I'm sure there are some who would believe otherwise."
"Beautiful AND smart. Is there anything you aren't capable of?"
"Well I can't sing. I've established that fact rather recently."
"Too bad. I could listen to your voice all day."
Setsuna licked a drop of tea from her finger, eyes turned towards the window. There was once a time when such a remark could make her blush.
"So, Mr. Kurogawa, you know where I'm headed. Care to indulge me?"
"Ah, well unlike you, Ms. Meiou, I am in no way, shape, or form headed in the direction of my past. In fact, I am very much rushing open-armed towards my future."
"Why the rush? The future will get here when it does. Keep running like that, and before you know it, you'll be dead. That, my friend, is the future that everyone will find, someday."
"Well you see, Ms. Meiou, recently I have found myself quite dissatisfied with my life, as it were, and I'm rather in a hurry to change things."
"I see. But what will you do if you don't like the changes that are made? What if they're bad changes?"
"Change is always good when you live in a world of monotony."
"Is it? You must not live in a very good world, then."
"The world I live in is imperfect. That, I am certain, is a constant that can never be changed. However, there are some changes I wish to find, if indeed they will allow themselves to be found."
"Oh, but there is one factor which you overlook. The greatest constant of all is change. Empires are built and destroyed. People, creatures, stars are all born, and all of them someday die. Galaxies are formed, and they too are destroyed. Change is ever-present, even for those who fail to see it."
"Indeed, but I have found that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Change is nothing but an endless cycle. The same old steps are replayed over and over, with little to differentiate one from another."
The flat, desolate land rolled by like an endless tide. In the distance, the sun could be seen streaming down in golden beams that shone between the clouds, giving a mystical sort of shine to the otherwise dull setting.
"In a way," the man continued, "nothing ever changes."
"Then why not break the cycle?" The question came out a little more harshly than Setsuna intended. She could not imagine why this pseudo-philosophical conversation even mattered to her, or why she felt so defiant of the strange man's position.
He gave a small smirk, a quick, agreeing nod. "That," Mr. Kurogawa said simply, "is exactly my point."
The train was beginning to slow, as it approached the next stop. The green-haired man glanced at his watch.
"Well, Ms. Meiou, it has been a pleasure, but I'm afraid my stop is coming up."
"Oh," breathed Setsuna, remembering something. "Could you tell me the time, please?"
"It's six o'clock," Kado said absentmindedly, draping his coat over one arm. He looked up at her again, swallowing her with those ebony eyes. "Perhaps we'll meet again someday."
"Perhaps." Setsuna extended a slender hand across the table. "Wonderful to meet you, Mr. Kurogawa."
He reached out, accepting it. "The feeling is mutual Ms. Me--" The words died in his throat as her hand clasped his, but before he could pull it back, she had already clamped down on it with sailor senshi strength. His entire body went rigid, and he was staring at Setsuna with what could only be described as surprise. The garnet-eyed woman watched him calmly, the only sign of effort on her part being the white knuckles that showed on her hand. Their hands felt warm and soft against each other, and anyone watching them may have thought they were two lovers who were holding one another tight as they gazed into each other's eyes. But no onlooker would have seen the piece of cold, hard stone that rested between their two palms. The greyish-black stone that had been carved into the shape of a tiny key.
The man's eyes trailed down to the two hands that were clasped between them on the table, but a few attempted tugs seemed to tell him that he would be unable to release himself without causing a scene. When he looked back up at Setsuna, all traces of surprise had left him, and he even gave her a bit of a devious, knowing smirk.
"Not playing by the rules, are you Ms. Meiou?"
Setsuna smiled sweetly. "How can I play by the rules if I do not even know what game I'm in, Mr. Kurogawa?"
"The game? The game you're in could be summed up as a complicated version of cat and mouse, I suppose. The question, of course, is which are you? The cat or the mouse?"
"I'd like the answer to that, myself. That is one of my many questions."
"What is it you're after, Ms. Meiou?"
"I want answers."
"There aren't any. That's as much an answer as you'll find."
Setsuna gripped his hand tighter, pushing the cold stone deeper into his flesh. He seemed to wince a little. "That isn't helping, Mr. Kurogawa."
"I don't have your answers, Ms. Meiou."
"Then who does? You know what I'm looking for. You know it, and you know me. Why was I led here if you're no help to me?"
The green-haired man leaned back in his seat, his arm stretched at full length like a leash that he could not be rid of. "Yes, I know what you're after. The person of your past, am I right?" He shook his head. "I'm not the one you're looking for."
"Then who are you?"
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. "Just a piece of the puzzle." He took a breath, glancing around the small car as though to pluck his words out from the ceiling or beneath the tables. "You'll get the answers you're looking for at the river Acheroin. Pay the ferryman his fare, then ride upstream to the place where sorrows begin. You'll know what to do from there."
Setsuna nodded, mentally recording the cryptic directions for later.
"Setsuna," he looked at her directly, calling her by her given name for the first time, "you should also know this. The color blue is more dangerous than it seems. The lioness often shrouds her fangs beneath the fur of a kitten. At the twelfth hour, look for the rose of tarnished steel. And remember that the key lies in unity."
"Any other riddles for me?"
"Nope, I think that's pretty much it." The man's hand slipped from hers as the train slowly chugged to a stop. The empty paper cup of earl grey toppled over and rolled to the floor. "It's been lovely, Ms. Meiou, but I'm afraid I must get off here."
"So must I. Goodbye, Mr. Kurogawa." Her hand closed around the small object in her palm. He gave her a passing nod, then turned to join the ranks of other people who were filing out.
The last she saw of him was the back of his greenish head, before the man, the passengers, the train, vanished from her sight, and Meiou Setsuna was alone again.
----------
(cough) Sorry it's taken me so long to update this. Even I was beginning to think that I may never get back to it. Thank you to everyone who has been patient with me, and who sticks with this fic despite its oddities. We're halfway through it, guys, and we may just get to the end yet!