To Lyger 0: The intent is more "divine." As I understand it, "kami" can be used of "God" or "gods," but has a much broader meaning.
To Butterfly: I mean, you can't write a story set in Japan without the Yakuza showing up somehow! :P
To yellow 14: At this point, I'm pretty sure they all need a hug!
"Stop just up here."
Viperion did as he was directed – those were the first words anyone had spoken in close to three hours. After their flight from Eiji and Miki's house, Miki had given them directions directly to Kimiko's apartment building, where Ryoku had rushed inside and bundled her cousin straight into the car – they had been stopped for no more than three minutes before Ryoku dropped from the apartment balcony and landed on the sidewalk next to the car, Kimiko hanging onto her back for dear life. Since then Viperion had spent an hour driving around the city in circles, crossing the bridges over and over, crisscrossing the city center, trying to throw off any pursuit. He had kept one eye on the mirrors the whole time, and not a single other vehicle had appeared. After his random meanderings, he found himself driving through in a neighborhood west of the Imperial Palace, surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings. At Ryoku's words, Viperion pulled to a stop in front of a building that looked no different from any of the others.
Ryoku pushed the car door open and sprang out, sword in hand, looking in both directions several times before gesturing for her aunt and cousins to follow her. "Wait in the entryway," she instructed them, pulling a key out of a pocket in her suit and handing it to Kimiko. Once they had moved to obey her, Ryoku stuck her head into the car window and whispered quietly. "Ditch the car and meet me on the roof."
"Be careful," he whispered back, trying to convey his worry with his eyes.
She gave him a curt not and rushed into the building after her family.
Viperion peeled away from the curb, making a mental note of the building's location before he lost sight of it entirely. Carefully he wended his way through the city, putting as much distance between himself and the others as he could. Ryoku would be okay – at least physically. The rest of the family was still alive. Even Shiro would recover from his injuries. But Eiji… Viperion slammed his palm into the steering wheel in frustration. He hadn't known Kagami's uncle for very long; he wasn't sure that Eiji had even really liked him, but he was family. Luka was no stranger to death; his miraculous burdened him with the responsibility of watching death after death in order to prevent those events from occurring. The first time he and Ryoku had worked together, he had watched her die no less than three times; since then he had watched her die dozens more. He had seen his other teammates get injured and even killed on numerous occasions, and he had borne those experiences stoically. After all, someone had to hold the Snake Miraculous, and this gave him the capacity to change events, to prevent the horrible scenarios he witnessed from becoming the reality. But watching people get hurt when he was powerless to prevent it… he still couldn't reconcile to that.
There had been a time when he was on patrol with Sk8r Girl last spring when they had run into a group of gangsters unexpectedly. Before he could activate Second Chance, she had attacked one of them and turned her back on another, who had knocked her to the ground, giving her a concussion. Viperion had dispatched the remaining thugs on his own with only two resets, but Sk8r Girl had been dazed for the rest of the night. When Rena Rouge and Pegasus had fought the Shunjar called "Hugo" in the fall, Luka had been at home, completely unaware of what was happening until it was over. But by far the worst had been when Ryoku was nearly killed over the summer while saving Carapace. He had been in Paris on his own mission at the time, and she had nearly bled out on the dirty concrete floor of a warehouse – and he none the wiser until it was all over. He'd had nightmares for days after that, despite knowing that she was alive, safe, and whole.
And this time, he had been helpless to save Eiji because he hadn't had Second Chance active. But even if he had, would that have made a difference? Sass had warned him before about the dangers inherent in his power. One of Sass's last Atlantean holders had activated Second Chance too late to save his team: while they were still alive when he activated it, there wasn't enough time to change the events. There was never enough time for him to change the events. He had tried over and over for years to save them, but all he could do was to watch them die over and over again. In the end, after over a decade of resets, he'd finally had to accept defeat. The best he had been able to accomplish was to recover their miraculous and escape. That had been the last time that Ourboros had ever transformed. He had renounced both his miraculous and his guardianship at the same time and gone off to live in exile. Losing all of his memories had been preferable to living with the memory of his failure.
Viperion's lips twisted down into a frown. This time, it had all happened so fast that he couldn't react until it was too late. And as a result, Kagami's uncle had been killed. There had been nothing he could do to change it. Now, all he could do was try to help Kagami and her aunt and cousins to pick up the pieces as best they could – to keep the rest of the family safe. He looked around in confusion: lost in thought as he had been, he had crossed at least two bridges heading east from Tokyo's city center. Turning off the highway, he followed signs indicating the way to Tokyo Disneyland. He could leave the car in the parking lot there, and no one would be able to trace it back to them. As late as it was – the car's clock showed it to be close to four in the morning – he was almost entirely alone on the road, though two or three cars drove in the same direction as him. Once he reached the park, the other vehicles turned aside into the employee parking lot, while he found a space as far from the front entrance as possible, in a darkened corner of the visitor lot. Finally he slipped out of the car and into the shadows to make his way back across the city to the apartment building where he had left Ryoku and the others.
As he raced across bridges and leapt from rooftop to rooftop, he inhaled deeply of the bracingly cold winter air, allowing it to reinvigorate him and wake him up. Far in the distance he could see the apartment building, and on the roof he could just make out a figure pacing back and forth. As he approached, he put on a burst of speed, racing across the rooftops, jumping from building to building, scrambling up the side of each new apartment building to its roof, gaining elevation with each one he traversed. Finally he reached Ryoku's apartment building, still another handful of floors taller. He jumped off his building, grabbed the balcony railing closest to his height, and propelled himself upward, springing from handhold to handhold, until he alit on the roof. Before he knew what was happening, a head of black hair crashed into him and buried itself in his chest, quivering as it was wracked by sobs.
Viperion held Ryoku close, one hand on her back while he ran the fingers of his other hand through her hair. Her grip on his suit front tightened. Slowly he guided her down to sit on the roof, easing her into his lap and hugging her tightly as she wept. To their right the cityscape was illuminated by the bright lights of the Tokyo Tower, and of the bridge beyond it. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply, in and out, rocking her from side to side and waiting for her tears to subside. He couldn't fix this, as much as it hurt to see the woman he loved in such terrible pain and grief. All he could do was to hold her and give her what comfort and strength he could. Quietly he began humming under his breath, a variation on her heart song – tinged as it sounded now by grief, modulating the tender song into a lament.
After what felt like an hour, Ryoku sniffled and nuzzled up against his collarbone, her breathing ragged. Viperion ran one finger down her side, and she shivered. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I…"
"Shh…" he soothed her quietly. "You have nothing to be sorry for, baby. If anything, I should be sorry. If I had only started my power before it happened, maybe we could have saved him."
She looked up at him in surprise. "I'm not upset with you over that," she answered. "I'm the one who does the fighting. I should have saved Ojisan." She sighed heavily, dropping her gaze down to his chest. "I shouldn't have been so short with you all night," she admitted, resting her forehead under his chin.
"I forgive you," he told her, rubbing her back soothingly. "And I'm here with you. You aren't facing this alone."
She wrapped her arms around him even more tightly, almost making it hard for him to breathe. "Thanks," she whispered, sniffling.
"So where are we?" he asked, looking around.
"My father's old apartment from before my parents met," Ryoku explained. "He kept it after they married as somewhere for clients to stay, and Mother kept it after his death. We haven't used it for clients in a few years since we have apartments closer to the office, so just about no one knows about it. Hopefully we'll be safe here until we figure out our next move."
Viperion nodded. "That was a smart idea."
"Thanks." She was quiet for a moment, and Viperion started to hum again, shifting from the lament to a something closer to her heart song. Finally her breathing began to even out. "Do you think we should tell them?" she asked.
"Our identities?" She nodded. He frowned. "I don't think we should tell them right now," he told her judiciously. "After everything that happened tonight, do they really need another shock? And we're all still in danger; it could put them in even more danger if they know our identities."
"We're all in danger right now, regardless of whether they know or not," she pointed out, pursing her lips.
He nodded. "That's true," he admitted. "But if the Yakuza find out our identities, what could they do with that information? Give it to Lynchpin or Night Bat? Use it to try to break us?" He let out a heavy breath. "Until we can figure out what's happening, I think we're all better off without them knowing."
Ryoku clenched her fist. "But I want them to know," she whispered.
"I just–I don't think it's a good idea." He sighed in frustration, clenching his eyes shut.
"I want to grieve with Obasan… I want her to know it's my fault…" Her voice dropped so low that the wind almost blew it away.
"Hey." Viperion shifted his hand to her shoulder, meeting her eye. "Don't put this on yourself, babe. You did everything you could. We just–" He paused. What could he even say? "Sometimes there is no fixing it."
Ryoku's shoulders slumped but she nodded reluctantly. He could hear the conflict in her song. "I know…"
He cradled her gently, looking out over the city. "The Tower really is beautiful in the dark," he commented, nodding to the south.
She hummed. "Yeah, it is." She sniffed. "I wish we could have come to see it under better circumstances…"
"Me, too." She shivered in his grip, and he pursed his lips. "Are you ready to go in?"
She nodded, and he slipped his other arm under her knees, cradling her against his chest, carrying her bridal-style to the rooftop door that she had propped ajar. Careful not to bump her feet on the doorframe, he sidestepped inside and kicked out the doorstop. Quietly he made his way down the steps to the correct floor and found the apartment door slightly ajar. Inside it was sparsely furnished and musty with a smell of disuse. Viperion walked over to the ratty old couch and laid Ryoku across it before lying down beside her and pulling a blanket over them. Softly he began to hum her heart song as her breathing evened out and she fell asleep nestled in his arms.
AN: Thanks to a couple comments/reviews wanting more of the characters' reactions to this week's "Patrol Log," I'm publishing a follow-up to it today in "Life and Times."