Harleking31: You know it's chapter 9 and for a Ratchet and Clank crossover we're talking it awfully slow to start Ratchet and Clanking
For the MC, I mean. We had the setup orchestrated by Clank after all
Also I take it his slow mo is for Aiming and shooting the guns? And I guess Hatsume will get to go nuts when making said guns?
Re: Let's just say that Rift Apart leave a lot of wiggle room for the whole 'Isekai' angle, and leave it at that~
LoamyCoffee: Oh I know about Twice's whole thing, doesn't mean I can't be sad that it happened.
Nice POV change, though I do feel for Takei with all his worries. Like all the dialogue in this.
I'm getting so invested in the relationships.
Re: In any sort of Isekai, with so-many of them done-to-death, I feel like it's the relationships that keep peoples' interest.
That's certainly how it works with me. A gimmick alone can only do so-much to hold my attention.
*AHA*
"Smith-san, Takei-kun is not doing okay!"
"What do you mean?" Kuroko asked, eager for any excuse to take a break from her mountains of paperwork.
As long as she was "consulting" with someone from the HPSC's medical branch "about an ongoing matter", no-one could accuse her of slacking off~
"He's been putting up a strong front for me, and he's been going to his therapy and rehab, but… He doesn't smile anymore. He thinks I don't notice, but I do. His expression… It's completely hollow whenever he thinks I'm not looking. What's worse is, I think I'm the only one to notice. The only one who cares."
"Well, he did narrowly survive another Villain attack. I mean, seriously, three in one lifetime…?"
"Sure, he survived… but I don't think he thinks this place is 'safe' anymore…" Hitomi whimpered. "Takehiko…"
Wow, if she were using his actual name, it had to be serious.
"He… He's stopped watching Hero TV. It's his favorite thing in the world, but now… All he does is train, eat, and sleep."
"What, like some kind of health nut?"
"No, more like an anime protagonist."
"Oof, that is bad…"
And it really was. In a world of Meta Abilities where you could find "anime protagonists" with their own unique power on every street corner, to have a very real person dedicate their every waking moment and impulse to physical conditioning and nothing else, that was truly a sign that someone had reached their limit.
Hell, surviving even one Villain attack was enough to make someone want to dedicate every fiber of their being into becoming a Hero, so for someone to endure that threefold, yet have no hope of becoming a Hero, or even the desire to…!
"We need to get him out of here," Hitomi spoke up, knocking her from her internal monologue. "With Dr. Shiga out of the picture, now is the perfect opportunity. If they manage to vet another person with a medicinal Quirk, they might not ever let him go. The time to act, is now."
"Well, it's nice to see you have a little backbone~" Smith hummed. "Don't worry, I'm sure all of us on our end will be able to think of something."
"Please… just… We need to save him. We have to-"
"-because no-one else will," Smith finished with a nod.
*AHA*
So… I was finally allowed to leave whatever floor I'd been being kept on for the past year.
I still couldn't leave the building wholesale, but it was implied that as long as I kept my mouth shut, I'd be able to move about with the other patients. The majority were Heroes, no-one I knew from the news, but the rest were either related to Heroes who "pulled some strings" to get them the best care in the country, or had been injured in a Villain attack in such a way that it'd be embarrassing to the HPSC if they became motivated to talk openly about certain organizational flaws to the media.
Stepping out of my own little gilded cage for the first time, I was able to see for certain the sheer diversity of Meta Abilities in this world. Not so much in what was being used, but listening to patients dick-measure about their Quirks, whose were stronger, whose were "cooler", or seeing just-how-far Heteromorphic abilities could warp the human body…
I mean seriously, Quirks that made you look like clowns, or robots, or… Lego blocks…?! I mean, sure, I already had some idea that a number of Quirks would purely vestigial like in the X-Men, but honestly, why would having a Quirk that gave you a head like a Lego block be considered 'better' than no Quirk at all?
For the time being I chose to ignore everyone, putting up with them as-little as possible. I'd read books in the library and take my meals in whatever private corner I could find, but what really caught my attention was the private gym. The name "Silverman" stirred something in my memory, but like many of them, that too was muddled.
Didn't matter, I finally had something I could pour all my nervous energy into, and the buffet of top-of-the-line gym equipment was more than able to accommodate.
"Wow, look at him go!"
"What kind of Quirk do you think he has?"
"Gotta be strength."
"No way, looks like high-speed punching to me."
"Oh! Like the High-Speed Hero: O'Clock!"
I tried to tune out the peanut gallery's speculation on what my non-existent Quirk was, disgusted but utterly numb to the fact that people put so-much importance on Quirks, that the idea of hard work existing independent of one was completely foreign to them. I wasn't even doing anything all that special, just punching the sandbag as fast as my body would allow.
I may or may not have been pretending I was beating Dr. Shiga within an inch of his life.
Listening to them prattle on, I could somewhat understand where anti-Meta comic book organizations like The Purifiers and Cadmus and so-on were coming from. Not about the whole genocide angle, but wanting ordinary people to not be considered "lesser" by people whose abilities were completely random.
These people were so arrogant, their noses turned up at anything without a Meta Ability, that it was a miracle the Quirkless population hadn't flat-out revolted yet, or just hunted them to extinction when they had the chance.
Not that I would've advocated for shit like Talentless Nana to occur, nor would I be cool with an organization like the Creature Rejection Cult which I still hated with a passion. As far as I knew, there wasn't any mainstream Anti-Quirk organization out there, and hate crimes by the Quirkless against their polar opposites were a rarity. Of course, between the Quirk Singularity Theory and the Quirk Extinction Theory, the Quirkless could very well get their day in court once the dust settled.
But hell, I was still banking on the complete and utter collapse of Hero Society predating any hypothetical of that far-flung nature.
Refocusing on what I was doing, hands brought up to my face, as I planted my feet and started to weave back and forth, I struck out at the sandbag with a deluge of hooks that made it bounce from side to side, a steady *POW* *POW* *POW* filling the air.
"OOOH! That must be his future Super Move! The 'Figure Eight Punch'!" another bellowed.
I hate this world and everyone in it…
*MHA*
"Smith-san, I need a status report," Hitomi said into her phone as Takehiko walked out on her, likely to the gym if his clothes were any indicator.
"I brought it up with the others, and we've been workshopping a few ideas."
"Well, tell them to double-time it, because I've been doing some digging on my end, and our window of opportunity will close in just short of a week."
"Oh? What did you find out?"
"The HPSC has been putting out feelers for a replacement for Dr. Shiga after he got shipped off to Tartarus, and according to the head of the Foreign Affairs Office, they're in negotiations with someone in America who might allow them to resume Takehiko's ongoing biological studies."
"Oh? And how'd you dig something like that up~?"
"I… had to bat my eye at the old pervert, show a little skin…" Hitomi shuddered in revulsion. "He didn't get his hands on me, but it's both amazing and mortifying how much confidential information a man will let slip if you undo an extra button or hike up your skirt…"
The man's eyes also never drifted above her neckline from the moment she entered the room, but she didn't need to burden Ms. Smith with that bit of dirty laundry…
"Well, you know how-pricey these medicinal Quirk users are. The HPSC can't let it slip why they need a Quirk like that before he's in the country, so they will take their time of it so they don't tip their hand. Not to mention, with Stars & Stripes growing in prominence, American immigration into Japan has been decreasing bit by bit, so anyone who does is under greater scrutiny."
"So with all this in mind… six days?"
"Let's make it 'five'," Smith replied. "I'll consult legal, see what our options are."
"Smith… You're 'legal'…" Hitomi deadpanned.
" . . . Fuck. Well, guess I'd better get working then. You keep working on Takehiko-kun, get him ready to leave without letting him know we're getting him ready to leave. If we tip our hand too soon, there's no telling what the President will do to us."
"Please, hurry. I don't know how much longer I can let him suffer like this…"
*MHA*
Hitomi had been acting strangely the past couple of days. Asking me what kind of food I wanted to get as soon as I was out of the hospital, what kind of school I'd like to go to, what tourist spots in Japan I'd like to visit, what I'd do with my 'own room'…
Part of me thinks she's plotting something, but given I'm surrounded by plots and intrigue, and in a world of superheroes that just screams- "There's always another secret." -, I could just-as-easily be "jumping at shadows". The fact that I'd checked whatever paper money I could find for vaguely Nordic watermarks may've also been proof that I was digging too deeply into this world's "dark side" to be considered healthy…
At the very least, I had a number of theories on that front to work on; A) Ouroborous didn't exist in this reality, B) Ouroborous did exist but not "domestically", or C) Ouroborous, if the aforementioned A)/B) were-applicable, was smart-enough in the modern day to not tag paper money with their 'gang sign' like in the version of Sternbild I'd seen.
When I wasn't leering at every dark shadow searching for psychotic Villains to run away from, I dedicated the whole of my time to physical conditioning. I mean sure, I still loved the old-school Heroes like Wild Tiger, Origami Cyclone, and Dragon Kid… but I just couldn't find it in myself to enjoy watching them fight long-dead Villains and "Villains" anymore. Not when there were only so many hours in the day I could make any real use of before my… this, body, gave out from exhaustion…
I never really talked to anyone in the gym, and if that made me come across as antisocial or standoffish… that was fine with me. I didn't intend on ever working with any of these people, not in their field of profession, and arrogant SOBs like them made for poor company anyway. Hell, everyone down here tended to be so self-centered, I doubt they even noticed.
The sun had already begun to set by the time my body started flagging the onset of genuine fatigue, but since Hitomi and the other nurses kept foisting a wheelchair onto me, I figured as long as I could wheel myself back to my room, I could at least push myself to that level of exhaustion.
As I rewatched the clips on "YouTube Archive" I'd flagged for myself, trying to get the Dempsey Roll right, I felt eyes on me, though then again, maybe it was my wanton paranoia making my hair stand on end.
It wasn't that I intended to get into fistfights if shit ever went pear-shaped again, I just wanted to make sure if I did get caught up in any comic book bullshit, I'd at least go down swinging; leave behind a black eye or two as-well-as "a beautiful corpse" as the saying goes. As for why I was using boxing and MMA videos as reference material, I couldn't exactly ask for martial arts training; not in this day and age as a Quirkless person, that'd just raise too many red flags since the modern MMA scene was dominated by Heteromorphs, and boxing by remote-controlled robots like in Real Steel; though in the case of the latter, it was centralized to North America.
No, as much as it sucked, if I ever wanted to be able to defend myself, no one was going to help me, but me.
And sure, Jack Dempsey had been dead for over two centuries, and his clips were largely in black and white, but it didn't change the fact that his knockouts were among the most-beautiful to be found in the back-when times. And it doesn't matter what Quirk a person has; if I can make their brain 'rattle', even a little, at the very least I can make an opening for myself to haul ass.
As I went through repetition after repetition, chugging water from the cooler to stave off the near-crippling exhaustion as much as I could, that hair-raising feeling got too-irritating to ignore, and I rounded on the purported source of my unease.
Sitting back against the wall, a gnarled wooden cane in hand, was an extremely short elderly man with heavy wrinkles and a scrawny build. He had a light complexion, brown eyes, and spiky grey hair styled short with a trimmed beard. His attire consisted of hospital scrubs much like mine, though it seemed like even a Child's Small was too big for the guy, as-shrunken with age as he'd become. Hell, his feet didn't even reach the floor anymore.
"Who're you?" I asked of the very Yoda-like man; that was just the sort of vibe he gave off.
"Torino," the old man replied hopping from his seat, his cane tapping loudly on the floor as he hobbled over. "It's rare, you know," he hummed aloud. "Finding any sort of work ethic independent of a Quirk I mean."
"Yeah, I figured," I muttered, since in all the time I'd come to the gym, everyone had some form of Quirk, no matter how minimal. It was like every Quirkless person I'd met stopped caring after they were four years old, while even the smallest amount of work was enough to inflate the ego of a Quirk user.
Not that I felt too bad for the Quirkless population. If they've all "given up" on themselves, that's on them, not me. Let them wallow in their misery, or pursue unrealistic dreams, but me? I intend to let my labor define me, not whatever superpower I do or don't have. And being Quirkless is only a pitfall close to big Hero Academies like Yuuei or Shiketsu where elitism was the norm; both were places I'd avoid like the plague as long as I could help it.
"You know, you actually remind me of one of my students," Torino idly hummed. "He wanted to become a Hero more than anything, even when everyone told him 'no'."
"And let me guess, he either died trying, or got some bullshit power because he was a 'late bloomer'," I spat.
"You don't think very highly of Quirks, do you?" the old man hummed with a raised brow.
"Quirks? No. No, I don't have a problem with those; Quirks are just a tool," I said shaking my head ruefully. "It's the people," I spat. "The day you're born, it's a Russian Roulette to see if 'Super-Jesus' will grant you some awesome power, and if he thinks you're not worth it, well… You could be a successful businessman or a brilliant scientist, but you'll always be considered second-rate to someone half-as-good-as you as long as they have a Quirk and you don't. Hell, even having a damn Lego block for a head is considered 'awe inspiring'," I spat.
"Well… I won't deny that isn't somewhat true…" the old man admitted.
"Honestly, if some huge scandal or something utterly destroys the current system… I sure as hell won't be too broken up over it. A rotten tree can only bear rotten fruit, no matter how much you pretty it up with trimming or fresh fertilizer or flowerbeds. And someday, the hatchet man will come to knock it all down," I huffed, idly wondering in the back of my mind why I was trying to validate my viewpoint to this complete stranger.
Maybe it was the whole Yoda thing…
"Yes, well, hopefully I'll be dead before that happens and it can be someone else's problem," the man called Torino said adjusting his grip on his cane.
An interesting response. Most of the time whenever I got riled up and went off on a tangent like this, people acted like I had blasphemed against their god and deity, or just thought I was practicing to become a news pundit; or at the very least that I was being sarcastic. That this guy wasn't looking at me like he wanted to melt my face with laser eyes, had me thinking maybe he was a retired Hero who'd seen enough of the world to find the cracks in the veneer, and was too fed up with something broken to bother defending it anymore.
" . . . So what're you in for?" I asked making small-talk.
"Oh, my arthritis' been actin' up, joints ain't what they used to be, but hey, figured I'd actually use these benefits I'd paid into for so long before I croaked," the old man shrugged as he walked up to my punching bag of choice. Squinted eyes appraised the slick smear overlapping the vampiric face I'd crudely drawn in marker on its white vinyl surface, and then to my fighting implements of choice. "You know that isn't good for you, right?"
"I'm a fast healer," I grunted, ignoring the ache, burn, and tingle of my split knuckles as my fingers stuck together.
Hell, half the time when this happened, people assumed it was some sort of "Liquid Armor" or some other nonsense, and they let me be. I wasn't about to disparage them of their jackassery, no skin off my nose. And as long as this body could heal from minor wounds like this overnight, I might as well take advantage.
"Sure, when you're young, but if you're trying to impress a girl, scars can only get you so far," Torino huffed. " . . . That look in your eyes. I take it you've had a brush with death. And recently at that."
"Something like that," I returned, clenching and unclenching my fists. "I can't count on anybody to save me, but me."
"That's a dangerous mentality to have nowadays; and crime's the lowest it's been in years."
"You saying I'm wrong?"
"Now I never said that, bouya," Torino shrugged. "Still, you really should take better care of yourself. That pretty nurse of yours has been skulking after you the past half-hour, and she looks worried sick."
Looking up over my shoulder, I caught the hint of a jewel-colored eye as its owner slipped back from the doorframe with an adorable squeak, ebony hair and that same jewel-like eye peeking out to look at me a few seconds later.
" . . . Hey," I sighed, my gut twisting in knots as Hitomi came up to me with an aid kit in her hands and a hurt look in her eye, disinfectant already at-the-ready.
*AHA*
"So… I see you've been training," Hitomi hummed as she wrapped my hands.
"Yeah."
"You've been working very hard, you know."
"The only way I know how."
"Just… take care of yourself, okay?"
"I always do."
"No. You don't."
Ouch.
"I just… I'm just… tired. Tired of 'villain this', 'villain that'. Peace of mind's the only 'peace' I'm ever gonna get…"
"There are people who will help you."
"Yeah. And look how well that turned out."
" . . . "
Damn.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out that way."
Hey, I wasn't too proud to admit when I was wrong.
And out of the many things Quirkless people could be nowadays, 'proud', was rarely one of them.
"Just… try to hold on a little longer," Hitomi pleaded.
*AHA*
'Just try to hold on a little longer.'
What the heck did that mean?
Eh, probably some BS they told you in this world to keep you going to therapy.
Hey, as long as I wasn't footing the bill…
"You're wasting a lot of energy, you know. Too many unnecessary movements."
This guy again…
"I'm not one of your trainees, so why do you care?"
"Call it nostalgia," the old man hummed as he hobbled over to me, tapping at my calves with his cane. "Your footwork's shoddy too. Self-teaching only works for Quirks, unless you happen by someone with the exact same ability who's been using it longer. You wanna learn how to fight with your fists, how to do it the right way, that takes effort."
"Why're you still here anyway?"
"Eh… Higher-ups want to keep me around for a while, so they're paying for the whole nine yards. Bloodwork, CT Scan, the kit and kaboodle," he shrugged as he walked around me, eyeing my stance.
" . . . Was this student of yours really such a big deal?"
"Would you care even if I told you?"
"Honestly… No," I shrugged. "Wild Tiger… Now that was a Hero worth idolizing."
"Wild Tiger… That's an old name I haven't heard in a long time…"
"What, you a history buff too?"
"Something like that. Toshi was a bit of a muscle-head with a lot of talent, but little else, so I used the old Hero TV recordings as a baseline for how he should, and shouldn't use his ability. Production quality back then was way better than what Hero Chasers can get with their phones and the like."
Well, at least one other person could see what I saw in Wild Tiger. On the off-chance I ever did become a Hero, I'd have to make that name mean something again.
Of course, I only envisioned that happening if I stumbled into the sort of "Isekai bullshit" that grants me some awesome power that's either OP from the get-go, or has the potential to become OP after a lot of work. And I didn't count my TTD because its "mechanical limits" were already firmly established.
"Music was nice too."
Won't argue with him there.
"I won't be a proper fighter. If anything I'll just learn to fight dirty."
"Well, don't think of it as 'cheating'. Think of it as 'winning'. Don't be afraid of throwing mud in their eye, even if you have'ta get your hands dirty."
"Is that really something you should be telling an impressionable child?"
"Why should I care? I'm not your grandparent."
" . . . Fair point," I shrugged. "So, what other pieces of wisdom do you got for me?"
*AHA*
"Takehiko-kun?" Hitomi asked, stepping into my room that evening.
"Hm?" I hummed, looking up from my refresher materials to see her smiling broadly. "What's got you in such a good mood?"
"I have something for you! Something… left for you by your parents…" she said hauling in a heavy trunk on a dolly. It looked like an old steamer covered in faded red leather and metal trimmings that'd desaturated with age.
'Your parents.'
'My', parents…?
No, not mine. 'His'.
"You know, I've been meaning to ask…" I hummed awkwardly, wondering how to bring this particular subject up. "Do I have any sort of… inheritance, waiting for me when I leave?"
"Most of it… Most of it was sold in an estate sale after they were killed by that Villain so you wouldn't inherit their debts," Hitomi answered. "This, the stuff that was yours, was earmarked and set aside for when you left… left the orphanage," she finished awkwardly, setting the trunk down with a grunt.
"Hmmm…" I hummed as I looked at the trunk, the gears in my head turning.
In a way, what had happened to his parents' material assets and estate following that Villain attack made sense. If a Villain kills a kid's parents but that kid inherited the parents' debts (in the absence of any extended family that could help shoulder aforementioned burden), then they're more-likely to become a Villain later on in the future; on account of the system fucking them over. Since Villains were as much a product of "society" as they were the poor decision making of "the individual", then it made sense why government relief such as this had become so-important, since a child couldn't really be expected to square away their own parents' tab.
Or at least that was my speculation on it. In a world where anyone from 80% of the populous could become a dangerous super-criminal with a wildly unpredictable Meta Ability, it only made sense to stem the tide as much as possible; even if the current government policies were nothing more than a 'Dutch Boy' patching up the real problems that went on being ignored.
The me that was, well me, had no real attachment to anything that belonged to my host body. However, the innate curiosity of myself, and something much deeper than that, compelled me to walk over to the old steamer. Seeing that there was a lock on the front, Hitomi frantically scrambled in her coat before withdrawing an old key and offering it to me, the lock opening a moment later with little fuss.
The left half of the steamer trunk was dominated by a large wooden block like Mahogany with a handle on top and brass case locks, the interior of the steamer trunk padded to hold it snugly in place. The right half of the steamer trunk, separated by a dividing wall, was filled with a number of personal effects, though the wooden block on the left interested me more.
Pulling the case free and setting it on the nearby table, I blinked in nostalgia as I beheld something that strongly reminded me of the scene in Toy Story 2 where the old man who played chess with himself for was called in to repair Woody after his arm finally came off; the dimensions weren't 100% identical, but the form and the function were. Opening it up revealed an array of tools and supplies not dedicated to the playing of chess or the repair of collectible toys, but timepieces as an array of clockwork parts revealed themselves to me. Mainsprings, wheel trains, escapements, oscillators, and so-on in numerous shapes, sizes, colors, and materials arrayed themselves before me, as well as a clamp dedicated to holding a watch casing down as the inner workings were meticulously assembled.
"Whoaaaa! So many tools and moving parts!" Hitomi awed, a lance of pain shooting me between the eyes like a carpentry nail as silt gave way to old, now-currently new, memories.
'That's right, my-I mean, Takehiko's parents… They were Horologists… They made, maintained, and fixed watches and clocks for everyone from the working man to the wealthy…' I thought as flashes of formerly-lost memories came to the surface.
The only thing that stopped me from accepting them as my own memories, was that my-I mean Takehiko's parents, looked completely different from the parents that reared and raised me before I "reincarnated".
As long as I could pick Heteromorphs out of the crowd in the memories swirling around upstairs, it was easy to differentiate between my original, and 'new' memories.
I idly wondered if this is what the Flash felt like after the first Flashpoint, having to juggle between memories from different timelines.
Turning toward the personal effects in the other side of the trunk, the first thing that caught my eye was a wooden case with a glass lid, the name Tokei etched in the top and stylized like a brand name, hovering over two rows a half-dozen long of various watches, the circular unadorned watch faces giving way to more intricate watch casings of more-varying shapes and themes as it went from left to right.
The next item was a fine crystalline trophy resembling a grandfather clock with gold adornments, an actual timepiece encased within and dutifully ticking away. Accompanying it was a framed picture of a younger-looking Takehiko Tokei accepting aforementioned award from an elderly man with white hair and beard, a line of competition-grade watches and timepieces on display across the table in the background. Off to the side were a collection of disgruntled-looking Horologists twice Takehiko's age who tried, and failed, to hide that they utterly hated being upstaged in such a way by someone so young.
Huh. 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.'
"I did a bit of digging. Back before the orphanage, you were on the path to become a prodigal Horologist like your parents," Hitomi spoke up. "Even won that big contest right… right before…" she trailed off. "I thought if I had this brought to you, it'd help you feel more like yourself."
This… It was a touching gesture, truly! But… All it did was make my heart sink.
Hitomi thought that by doing this she was giving me back a piece of my past… but all it did was hammer home the fact that by "reincarnating", I'd in fact stolen a future from someone else. Someone else that could've just-as-easily or even not-so-easily, woken up on their own if I hadn't pre-empted them.
Something most of the Isekai sub-genre gleefully ignored…
"Huhn…?" I blinked as I 'felt' the silt in my head giving way, something new-to-me, technically-old, bubbling to the surface. "What…?"
"Ah, Takei-kun, are you okay!" Hitomi cried running up to me as I wavered.
"Y-Yeah… I'm… fine…" I murmured, feeling something tugging at my attention that hadn't before. "Hitomi… that watch…" I said feeling my eyes drift.
"What, this?" she blinked holding up a slender wrist, a watch with a triangular casing and a pink leather strap hanging upon it. "Oh, Mitsumi-chan gave it to me as a gift a while back. I've been meaning to get it fixed, but-"
Without even realizing what I was doing, my palm turned up to her, what I assumed to be an expectant look upon my face as I eyed the tiny watch hands; delicate, but inert.
" . . . Oh! I see!" she blinked her mono-eye widely, delicate fingers undoing the tiny buckle and setting the small timepiece free. "Here."
Like I were a passenger in my own body, it seemed to move with a mind of its own, taking hold of the timepiece and walking toward the toolbox I'd set on the table a minute before. Undoing the brass case locks and unfurling the multi-tier trays once more, flipping the clamp into position from the case's interior I set the timepiece firmly into place with a practiced hand. The phantom pain continuing as practiced hands that only recently became my own got to work, I could only spectate as I got to work on the little piece of finery, the delicate clockmaker tools like an extension of my fingers.
Popping the back of the watch casing free, disassembling the parts from their places, after coming upon a piece that wasn't where it belonged, rattling against the opposite of the watch face with a tooth missing, I set it to the side and fished for a replacement in the compartmentalized trays above the work station. An equivalent replacement found a few moments later, with machine-like precision my body began to reassemble the timepiece in earnest. Winding the final spring and affixing the back of the casing in place, pressing it to my ear, a relieved sigh left my lips from some deeply-forgotten place as the minute *tick*tick*tick* of a timepiece freshly repaired met my ears.
And if anyone ever accused me of humming "The Cleaner" by Randy Newman while I was working, I'd call them a big fat liar.
"Whoa! That was so fast!" Hitomi awed as my body held the timepiece out for her to take, the tiny hands in sync with its bigger relative hanging on the wall. "You really are a champion clock-maker!"
"Not me… Not anymore…" I returned somberly as I carefully put the tools I'd used away, closing up my work station and returning it to its innocuous block-like state. "I'm… I'm not that person… anymore…"
"But you can be again!" she insisted. "If I took this to a shop, they might make me wait a week, or charge me more than the watch was worth. But you… You did something amazing today."
"Not that amazing…" I muttered. 'And it certainly wasn't 'me' who did it…' I thought as my hands ached with a phantom pain, even though they were still attached to my body.
" . . . Even if you don't remember everything about your past, your body still remembers," Hitomi said as she went through my-Takehiko's effects, drawing something forth from it. "More than that, the love your parents have for you… it isn't gone. It's still here. Right, here," she said pressing a finger to my chest, before laying in my palms another framed picture.
This one was a family portrait. A man, a woman, their child. They were finely dressed, but not in clothes more-expensive 'than most people's apartments'. There was love there, a moment frozen in time… yet none of it belonged to me.
It belonged to the little boy who would never wake up. Whose body I wore, even now, like an ill-fitting suit I couldn't quite get comfortable in…
"If you don't want to become a clock-maker again, if you want to do something new with this 'second lease' you've gotten… That's fine too," she said reassuringly. "But… don't act like your past, like your origin, is lost to you. When I look in your eyes with my own, I see more than most do; I like to think that by giving up my depth perception, what I got in return was the power to see into people's hearts. When you first woke up, I saw someone that was lost, panicked, confused… As I continued to care for you, I saw someone who wanted to make the most of the life they'd taken back for themselves. What I'll see in the future… Maybe it isn't what you would've wanted before, but it doesn't mean it's any lesser. No matter what, as long as you're alive, you can always make new memories; for yourself, and for those that aren't with us anymore."
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she was talking about her own mother as a way of making me feel better about my own. And all that talk about gaining something 'in exchange' for the depth perception she lacked… It made me realize that not having something everyone else took for granted, literally and metaphorically… it had a way of creating something new. Something different. If Hitomi grew up with two eyes instead of one, would she have still become the person she is today?
I never took her as one to spout philosophy, yet… her words rung true somehow. Resonated with something deep down inside.
Turning to a stack of papers among Takehiko's effects, leafing through them to find a complex watch schematic and then turning back to the tool case set out on the table, I realized something.
Just because I'd reincarnated into someone else's body, didn't mean I had to let the past die. Even if it wasn't mine, it was still a past I could make my own. Like I remember Shirou Emiya saying to Gilgamesh…
"Everything here is a fake. However, there's nothing that says a fake can't rival the real thing."
In doing this, in doing what he had been good at…
It was the only way to keep the original Takehiko Tokei alive. And there wasn't any rule saying I couldn't adopt that origin story as my own origin.
Even if the future I strode toward wasn't as originally intended.