Chapter 16 - Further Going

"Well, that was useless." Kira said unhelpfully as he and Zyro rounded the corner, heading away from the Kasama Inari Shrine that had proved not to be much help.
Kira had let Zyro do a lot of the talking, with asking about any shrines or temples devoted to Nemesis and what-not, which the priest there had given them strange looks before simply answering that there was nothing that he knew of.
"Yeah, I guess.." Zyro replied, glancing over his shoulder for a moment before looking ahead again, his eyes glancing over towards the pastel-haired blader beside him, "Where to next?"

"Well, there's another shrine over to the west side of town.." Kira advised, though it almost seemed more to himself rather than to Zyro, "I suppose we could look at that one, but I doubt they'd have anything if this one didn't." Zyro raised an eyebrow slightly.
"How many shrines does this place have, exactly?" He asked. It was curiosity, not sarcasm, and even Kira - who didn't really take the time to get to know him - knew that Zyro wasn't one for sarcasm.
"There's a few." The Bahamoote Blader answered with a small sigh trailing the words, "But I rather doubt they'd have anything if that one didn't." Zyro shrugged his shoulders, a small smile on his face that showed that he was at least trying to be a bit more positive.

"Well, it's worth a shot, isn't it?" He asked, which simply earned a small sigh from the Bahamoote Blader beside him.
"I suppose, if you say so." The pastel-haired boy replied in a bored tone and - taking the lead once more - began to lead the other boy in the direction to where he had said the other shrine was. Zyro simply followed the slightly older blader, being sure to stay relatively beside him while the other still lead the way.
But even as he followed, trying to keep his mind on the objective at hand, Zyro couldn't help but - once again - think about how Kira knew so much about Kasama. Knowing about a few shrines around the small city was one thing, but he also knew the exact location of a hotel, which he was pretty sure didn't just come from random browsing of the internet.
He already suspected the answer, which hadn't exactly taken him too long to figure out once he had considered the possibilities, and it was the only thing that really made sense.
It took several moments of silence between the two of them, listening to nothing more than the cars passing by and the sound of bickering pedestrians passing to and fro, before Zyro finally decided to speak.

"Hey, Kira." Zyro began, the question lingering on his lips that he was just a second away from asking. Maybe it was a bad idea, but curiosity began to win over above all things.

"What?" Kira asked, irritation present in his voice. He didn't look at Zyro as they both kept walking, but the ginger-ravenette didn't say anything about that - after all, it was Kira he was talking to.

"Did you used to live here?" Zyro asked, and all at once, Kira stopped walking. Zyro stopped as well, and after only a couple moments did Kira respond.
"What makes you think that?" The pastel-haired blader asked, his voice sounding unusually stiff and rigid.
Despite that, Zyro answered anyway.
"Because you obviously know a lot about this place." He said, "And I'm pretty sure that all of that didn't just come from research."

"Why does this matter so much to you, Zyro?" Kira asked, turning around with a cold look in his one eye and slightly sour expression on his face, "I know a bit about the place, alright? Why are you so concerned about it?"

"I'm just.. Curious..." Zyro muttered with a shrug, though kept his eyes locked with Kira's one, "You don't seem to want to talk about it, so I thought I'd try and ask." Kira simply scowled at him.
"Well, don't ask." He said firmly, his one eye narrowed slightly, "It's not important."

"It seems important to you." Zyro retorted calmly.
Kira fell silent at those words.
He averted his one eye away from the Fire Blader, barely able to look at him from the amount of frustration building up inside from Zyro's blatant stubbornness on the subject. He honestly didn't understand Zyro's whole thing with always being there for his friends, for always being concerned about them.

He was hardly his friend at all.

But even so, Zyro looked at him silently, watching him with forlorn eyes that they all knew didn't suit him - even though Kira himself would have previously begged to differ -, waiting to see whether or not Kira would answer or not.
Kira drew his one brow inward, a troubled look on his face as the question swam around in his head, letting it all sink in about what exactly Zyro was asking him - he didn't need this sentimental crap.
He never had, and he had never wanted it in the first place.
Forget the memories, burn them, bury them, do whatever you had to do with them. But no matter what he did, they would always come back to him once in awhile.
Loathing himself entirely, Kira sighed deeply through his nose which made a soft growling sound in his throat before he finally spoke; he didn't bring himself to look Zyro in the eye, though.

"I grew up here, alright?" It came out grated, rigid and stiff, and a hint of reluctance behind his voice at saying anything at all.
"Is that what you wanted to hear, Zyro?" The pastel-haired blader asked, a slightly defeated tone to his voice that he hated hearing from himself.
"I guess.." Zyro said, looking down towards his feet for a moment before looking back up.

"Good." Kira said almost immediately, "Now if you don't have anymore life questions, come on." Without being given the time to answer, Kira simply grabbed Zyro's wrist and pulled him forward as he started walking again, letting go of him after a moment or two once he knew that he was following along beside him.
Zyro was actually surprised by the action, but didn't comment on it since he knew Kira was just doing whatever he thought was necessary; including getting him to follow him again after stubborn talk about knowledge.
Swallowing the lump in his throat at the sudden tenseness between them, the Fire Blader ultimately decided to speak again.
"How much do you know about Kasama, exactly?" The ginger-ravenette questioned, mentally preparing himself for the same response he had gotten the first time.

Instead, Kira answered stiffly with, "I know enough." and refused to look at him.
"I don't know anything about any of those damned temples we're looking for, if that's what you're asking." The pastel-haired blader continued, "I know a lot about the place, but I'm not a historian on it. I only ever bothered to know enough to get myself through the day when I was a kid."
Zyro knit his eyebrows together at that statement, finding it almost troubling. He didn't entirely know what Kira meant by that, so it wasn't his place to be setting labels - it probably wasn't even be his place to question Kira about his origins at all.
But he did consider Kira one of his friends - even if the other blader could say otherwise due to their previous quarrels -, and he was concerned about him, most of all.

"Is that why you think the other shrine won't know anything?" The Fire Blader asked, trying to say at least somewhat on topic even while all the little theories about Kira himself floated around in his head.
"Oh, who knows?.." Kira said irritably with a roll of the eye, "I barely ever walked past these things, let alone actually go the them. I just know that usually one shrine knows something, the other ones do to, or something like that. I haven't even been here for 3 years, so hell if I remember." Kira mentally cringed at his own words.
Why was he suddenly telling snippets of his past to the kid that he had wanted nothing more than to cause pain to not a month or so ago?
All memories ever were was a weakness, which was why he had burnt most of them and left behind this wretched town that he always hated anyways.
Whether Zyro actually cared or not, he didn't have the slightest clue, but there was no reason that he should be concerned about him; so why was he vaguely talking to him about a childhood that he had less than enjoyed?

"Is that when you joined the DNA?" Zyro asked.
"Obviously." Kira responded sarcastically, refusing to look at the slightly younger boy. After a few moments, Kira sighed and spoke once more in irritation.

"I suppose you want to know why I did, now?" He asked, glancing over towards the Fire Blader who seemed a bit taken aback.
"I never said that.." Zyro responded in defense, his eyebrows knitted together slightly as he looked away from the Bahamoote Blader.
"You didn't have too." Kira said, looking forward once again and glancing around with his one eye to make sure that they were going in the right direction, "It's practically written on your face." Sky blue eyes looked back towards the other blader that still refused to look at him, unknowing of what he was supposed to say to Kira from his stubbornness to talk.
"I was just wondering.." The Fire Blader said lamely, shrugging his shoulders softly as they both turned the corner on the sidewalk, "Why did you join them, exactly?"
Sighing through his nose, Kira shook his head slightly.
Zyro probably wasn't going to drop the subject until they got to that shrine, which now seemed miles away even though it was just a few streets over by now. Of course, he would probably stop if Kira told him to drop it, as he told him to drop the sulking attitude that he couldn't seem to help for too long.
He should just stop talking about it altogether, tell Zyro that he should forget about it because he wasn't going to answer him, that this wouldn't accomplish anything if they actually did want to find the psychopath they were chasing after.
After all, this place really wasn't anything more to him than just a place where they could possibly find some answers to something relating to the sadistic bastard they seemed to hate so much.

"You have to answer, Kira, I-" Zyro began, but Kira almost immediately cut in with words that he had not planned to come out of his mouth.

"Because I had nowhere else to be." The pastel-haired blader answered, stopping in his tracks once more after the outburst of an answer that he hadn't meant to give the other boy.
From the silence that passed for no more than a moment, Zyro was surprised as well that Kira had answered at all.
Growling softly in his throat, Kira inwardly cursed at himself for even unconsciously considering to answer, but he knew there was no going back and making sure that he didn't.

Why had even answered in the first place?...

It wasn't like Zyro had the right to know, and he would never have let himself feel obligated to do so; yes, he owed Zyro for saving his life, but that didn't mean spilling his guts about his entire life.
It was nothing more than a simple mistake... Or maybe it was the small soft spot that he denied he had for the other blader.
"Kira?" Zyro spoke up, concern lacing his voice as he watched the pastel-haired boy, who was simply staring down towards the ground, unblinking.

"There wasn't anything for me around here." Kira continued, his voice grating and loathing, "Even if there was, the DNA was more suited for me than anything. They didn't give a damn if I enjoyed watching people suffer for no reason, they just wanted me to destroy you all."
His one eye turned over towards Zyro, who simply stood there frozen with nothing to say. "I actually thought breaking you was a lot of fun, Kurogane." The twitch of a smirk played on the edges of Kira's purple lips as he spoke, "Doji and the Garcias didn't care what I did with you, as long as I worked for them, and I did that. They even installed this thing on me."
Kira raised one slender hand up to the eye patch covered almost half of his faith, tapping on it softly with one finger and listening to the gentle ring of his red-gloved fingertip on metal.
"Hmph.." Kira hummed briefly, dropping his hand away from his eye patch and settling it on his hip, "That's all. I didn't have any reason to stay here, so I joined the DNA. Simple as that."

"Wouldn't anyone have come looking for you?" Zyro asked, internally trying to make sense of how that whole scenario with Kira leaving his hometown would've worked when he sounded like he was only around 13 or so.
Kira simply chuckled at the idea.
"I doubt any of them would've cared if I left or not.." He said with stifling amusement, "I wasn't exactly the favorite as you can imagine.."

"But they were your family, weren't they?" Zyro asked, his brows knitted together and watching as Kira turned mostly towards him with a more sour expression on his face.
"They were never my family, Zyro." The pastel-haired blader said before he could think not too, "There was just a lot of us... In the houses.."

All of once, Kira mentally slapped himself for letting that part slip, and immediately averted his one eye away from the other blader.
"Dammit.." He thought to himself, cursing over and over again inside his head from how vulnerable he had just made himself to Zyro.
For a few moments, neither of them said anything, and it automatically seemed like everything around them had disappeared, in a world where there was no sound, and no one else except for them and their voices.
"You're a foster kid..." Zyro finally said, a sense of realization in his tone of voice. Kira sighed heavily, a bitter look on his face that was more for himself than anyone else. There was a tightening in his chest, an almost nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach as he forced himself to speak.

"Yes.." He answered stiffly, "I am.. That's what happens when..."

No.

Ba-thump

Socked feet tapping against the wooden bar of the chair...

No.

Ba-thump

"Mommy?..." The door cracked open, creaking on its hinges as he opened it...

Forget about it... Forget about it..

Ba-thump

Water all over the floor, overflowing from the bathtub and stained with red..

It doesn't matter..

Ba-thump

His mother, pale as snow and leaning against the arch of the bathtub, long cuts on her wrists.. Red everywhere..

It never mattered...

Ba-thump

"Where's my mommy?.." There was no answer..

You never mattered..

Ba-thump

With a relatively stoic face did Kira swiftly turn and slam his fist directly into the lamp post that was beside him, a sharp sting and ache beginning at his knuckles and spreading halfway up his arm to his elbow, a muffled yell of frustration bitten back on his lips.
He could practically hear Zyro jump in surprise at this action, feeling those forlorn eyes stare at him from behind, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
The only thing he focused on was the pain that came swiftly, sharply, making half of the nerves in his arm react and burn for a short amount of time before it began to dull.
Even as the pained sensation began to fade, Kira hung on to every fiber of it as if were the only lifeline he had.
Breathing hard, he let his hand drop back down to his side, his knuckles and fingers now aching when he moved them, his shoulders stiff his head hung, looking down towards the ground in a defeated way.
Zyro simply stood there, shocked at Kira's course of action at slamming his fist into a metal pole, which would likely leave a bruise or two underneath his glove.
He had no idea what Kira had been about to say before he had fallen silent and done that, but he could tell that it might be a memory that he could've bare to bring to light. So he stood there helplessly, glancing around for a moment and seeing the few stares that Kira had gained before the strangers continued on with their lives like nothing had happened.

"Kira?..." Zyro spoke in concern, which drew Kira's attention and made him turn back towards the Fire Blader.
He looked at him with bitterness, eye narrowed and shoulders gently rising and falling with his breathing. Neither of them said anything.
Zyro looked down slightly, suddenly finding himself incapable of meeting Kira's eye as the guilt shot at him again.
"Kira, I..." Zyro began, but his voice died on his lips as he tried to speak, "I.. I'm sorry... I-I didn't mean to-"

"Don't apologize, Zyro." Kira said firmly, causing the other blader to look up at him once more to see that his expression had quickly changed to indifference, "It doesn't matter anymore. Now come on."
With no further words, Kira simply turned and started making his way down the sidewalk to their objective that they had been heading too before the heavy conversation had began.
Zyro, slightly taken aback by Kira's swift movement to brush it off, stood there a moment in shocked silence. He let out a shallow breath, an untold emotion behind it before he stood his head and hurried his way up the sidewalk to catch up with Kira...

Tithi had learned a lot of things from Dynamis in his time at the Mist Mountain Shrine, but funerals for deceased Guardians were not one of them.
Dynamis had told him that one guardian protected the mountain at a time, and when one Guardian's time had come to an end, another would be born soon after, that when a guardian of the shrine died their souls would be granted peace in the afterlife while another took their place to guard it until their dying days.
But he had never told him what happened with the guardians' bodies after they died, whether or not they were given funerals or if they were simply left to rot and decay until they were left as nothing but the dust and rock that made up the temple itself.
He had wished to honor Dyanmis's ancestry somehow, but not knowing what he was supposed to do with Dynamis's rotting corpse (flies, maggots, rot, flesh...) made it rather difficult.

Of course, he had first had to settle himself after unwittingly desecrating the temple by vomiting on the floor and after seeing Dynamis's body, which was a sight that he had never expected to see when he entered the shrine again.
He had consulted with himself on what exactly he was supposed to do in the great hall, sitting on the stairs and trying to make every bit of sense as he could. But it didn't make sense. Dynamis never usually left the Mist Mountain Shrine, and seeing as how he had lived there for years upon years on very little but still managing to keep himself healthy, it was a wonder of how exactly he had died in the first place.
His neck had been twisted in a way that definitely wasn't natural in any name of the word, unless it was a cause of the rigomortis that had stiffened his body and caused his limbs to jut out slightly at horrifying angles, but he highly doubted that.
At 17, Tithi definitely wasn't stupid, and could recognize a snapped neck when he saw one. He also knew that that didn't just happen for no reason.
So as he stood there before the flaming pyre he had built a small ways away from the Mist Mountain Shrine, he pondered all of it, watching absently with sorrow and anguish as Dynamis's previously rotting body burned.
Dynamis had been his friend for 7 years, when they had all met as Legendary Bladers back in the Nemesis Crisis, and to say the least, it hurt.
Tithi had lost his mother when he was as young as 9, and he had resorted to living in the ruins by that town for the next year before he had met Yu and Kyoya, but losing Dynamis was on a whole different level than his mother had been at.
Losing him seemed to hurt more, to cause the tightening in his chest and rock in his stomach that made him feel like he was going to be sick again.
Not knowing exactly how he died was what troubled him the most, however. Of course, there was the blatant show of a broken or snapped neck, which was likely the cause of it, but it was how it happened that didn't make any sense.

But even through the tears, the smell, and the overwhelming thought of he's dead... Tithi was able to see the slightly worn, chalk words written on the floor by Dynamis's body that gave him at least some sort of reassurance.
He didn't know where they came from, who had written them, or even if it was actually the truth, but merely the thought that the Guardian didn't suffer to ease some of the sorrow and grief.
Narrowing his eyes slightly, an anguished look on his face, Tithi looked up from the ground with his light blue orbs and stared into the burning flames, the sound of sparks ringing in his ears.
The smoke from the fire rose high into the air, the smell of burning flesh filling his nose but somehow being unable to phase him, unlike the way he had reacted when he first seen the rotting corpse.
The purplette let out a shaky breath, shaking his head slightly as he pulled his lower lip into his mouth and sucked on it before letting it go.

"Why did it have to be you, Dynamis?.." Tithi asked the burning corpse that he knew was beyond answering him, "Why the hell did it have to be you?!"
The tears started falling against his will, the tear tracks glimmering in the sunlight against his dark skin, overlapping the ones from earlier that were now barely visible on his face.
Bringing a hand up to his face, he wiped the tears away on the back of it.
Once more, he looked up towards the flaming carcass that couldn't even be seen upon the pyre anymore, entirely consumed by the flames that would - maybe - release Dynamis's soul from its trapped agony in a broken body.
Tithi had no idea how funerals for the dead Guardians of Mist Mountain went, or even if there were any funerals given, but this was the least he could do for the man. He deserved it, after all that he had done.
Once more, the boy shook his head, sighing through his nose and forcing the tears down that gathered in his eyes again and refused to leave him alone.

"I'll look after it the best I can..." Tithi said hopelessly, feeling the heat of the flames against his skin that dried the damp tracks from his eyes, "I hope all you taught me will do me some sort of good... Goodbye, Dynamis.. Sorry I wasn't around more before this.."
Unable to look at the fire again, the purplette simply turned and walked away, heading through the small, wide rock path that would lead him back to the shrine again.
The sound of the flames roared, the smell of smoke filling the air as the fire crackled and sparked endlessly.
As he walked, Tithi held onto that sound; it was the last he had of Dynamis as his soul, hopefully, passed on into Nirvana to be with the rest of his ancestors...

For most of his work hours that day, Tsubasa had been doing nothing but overlooking all that he had received from the personnel he had sent to Tokyo, Niigata, Sendai, Chiba, and Sapporo, filing out most of them as they proved not to be of any help - to tell the truth, none of them so far seemed to be.
He was still waiting for a few more files from both Niigata and Sapporo, but he had gone over at least half of the ones he did have while he was waiting patiently for them.
He read each file carefully for hours, and had even stayed overnight the previous day so that he could skim through at least a quarter of them if possible.
Needless to say, it was getting a bit on his nerves, but after years of learning patience and tranquility through the wings of his Eagle, he was able to take a few deep breaths every now and then and remind himself that there was no reason to get frustrated, since there was always going to be pain with gain.

Tapping his finger on his desk, the silverette's golden eyes scanned over the screen in front of him as they had for several hours that day, a Latte that he requested earlier sitting by his side for refreshment.
"Hmmm.." The Director hummed softly to himself as he read the last there was of the file in front of him, before deciding that it too was one of no use, and slid his finger across the screen to the next one after filing the other one in the continuously growing list of things that just didn't prove to be helpful.
Blinking a few times, Tsubasa reached over and took another sip from the cup beside him, which was now half full over the span of the hour since it had been brought to him. Before he set it down again, the phone at the corner of his desk burst out with its loud ringing, drawing his attention away from the screen in front of him as he acknowledged it.
Setting the cup down, the silverette reached over and picked up the phone off the receiver, putting it up to his ear as he answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Director." Greeted the all too familiar voice of Ayano, who he knew was currently filling in Tamako's place for receiving calls and making outward calls, "Sorry if I'm disturbing anything, but Shura and Yuki are going to sending you some more files from Sapporo shortly." Sighing through his nose, Tsubasa let a soft smile cross his lips, even though there was no one to see it.
"Thanks." He said in gratitude, "I'll look at them shortly. If you can, try and contact Tanaka and Akari at Niigata to see how their progress is going."

"Sure thing, Director." Ayano responded obediently. Reassured that she would do the best she could, Tsubasa nodded to himself and put the phone back onto the receiver.
Almost immediately after did the Director stand up, feeling the ache in his limbs after being seated at his desk for so long, and walked over to the one wall that was nothing but windows.
The sun beat down endlessly upon the city, barely a single cloud in the sky to protect them from its unbearable rays, reflecting off glass windows like a spotlight.
It showed down into what all made up Metal Bey City, with its colors and people, its life and its excitement for the battle.
To anyone else, it would seem like a very beautiful place, if you ignored the towering skyscrapers that blocked quite a few of the views, but to Tsubasa, everything seemed grey.

He could see the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the red and yellow and green and black of passing cars in the streets below, but to his own golden eyes they were all muted by grey. He knew he probably wasn't the only one who now saw the world this way.
He had looked upon the faces of Zyro, Madoka, Maru, and everyone else that had survived the battle, and he saw the changes.

The way Zyro was so... Broken down, all of the pressure seeming to chew away at him and leave him as a kid that they were almost stranger to.

The way Madoka's eyes didn't light up as beautifully as they used to with their turquoise shine, seeming almost hollowed out in their light whenever there was the talk of Beybattles and the when the days passed by.

The way Maru's usual cheerful and upbeat personality was muted by the weights put on her, especially with Dynamis's death.

Tsubasa had been through a lot in his days with Gingka's generation of Beyblade, and he had seen and experienced things that he would never forget, but somehow, all of this seemed just so different.
Maybe it was the undeniable fact that Gingka was actually dead and they had unwittingly gone with Alcorin's plans, or maybe it was something else entirely that Alcorin had done in the short week that Gingka had actually been comatose, but all of it seemed to have a greater impact on all of them than anything ever had.
Now that he thought about Zyro and the others, he had to wonder how exactly they were doing.
He had contacted them the day before to see how their progress was, and they had already been on the outskirts of Mito, so there wasn't really any telling where they could be now.
They might still be in Mito, or they might have left it by now to search for any answers elsewhere - it would probably be best to check and see how they were turning out.
Turning back to walk towards his desk, Tsubasa stopped in the very same moment as there was echo in the back of his skull.

"Tsubasa..."

A small gasp escaped caramel-colored lips, golden eyes widening at the voice that he did recognize as anyone he was familiar with.
If it had actually existed, and he wasn't finally snapping again like he had all those years ago with the Dark Power, he could barely hear it at all. It had sounded weak, almost desperate, soft, and almost yearning.
Slowly, golden eyes glanced about, looking from one corner of his office to the next, but found that he was only one there.
Surely it couldn't be another of Alcorin's tricks again like before, when he revealed himself to them on the screen behind his desk and told them all the vague truth.
Then again, Alcorin's voice, when they had found where he was, had echoed in the back of their skulls just like this one did now.
But if he truly had heard anything, this voice was not Alcorin's.

"Tsubasa..."

And there it was again.
More confident now that he wasn't losing it like he had with his dark side 8 years ago, the silverette felt like he had heard this voice from somewhere.
In the same type of scenario, in the back of his head... But instead of questioning that, the Director kept his cool and simply glanced around the room with his eyes again. "Hello?" He called out warily, and was immediately met with an answer.

"Tsubasa... Please.."

It struggled somehow, he could tell. Its voice sounded strained, and he wondered why.

"..Please... Tell them..."

'Tell them'? Tell who? Tell them what?

"What do you mean?" Tsubasa asked the air in front of him, being sure to be cautious in case anything bad out of this.
Either way, he probably very weird to anyone else if they could see him, talking to nobody and glancing around the room. But perhaps he wasn't talking to nobody.
Maybe not exactly...

"Tell them... That... Tell them..."

The more it spoke to him, the harder it became to hear. It echoed in the back of his head in a shapeless form, and the more it struggled to speak, the more it seemed to start to fade, to become more desperate to tell him... Something.
There was a ringing in Tsubasa's ears that had been faint before, but now seemed to intensify as the voice tried harder and harder to speak to him.

"..Tell them... He's..."

Then all at once, it stopped.

The body less voice stopped speaking, the unnaturally loud ringing in his ears ceasing to be heard, and Tsubasa was left once more in the uncomfortable silence of his office...

After what had been at least a 5 hour sleep, Takanosuke woke up once more to the feeling of a fresh cloth being put on his forehead by Sakyo.
The ice pack against his jugular vein had been removed, likely because the elder of the two didn't see it as too necessary anymore.
The blonde had blinked his eyes awake, and even through the drowsy haze leftover from his rest, he didn't feel the nausea in his stomach anymore, and the headache that had previously pounded against his skull was now gone as well, despite the uncomfortable aftermath of a soft pressure on the inside of his temples.
Groaning softly as he moved slowly, his body feeling heavy after resting for so long, Takanosuke looked over to his side to see Sakyo standing beside the bed he lay in, a rather soft look on his face (as soft as his could get) as he made sure he had placed the new cloth on Takanosuke's still somewhat warm forehead.
The Griffin Blader, though he didn't find himself voicing it, was grateful.

"You're awake.." Sakyo acknowledged aloud, his voice still with its rough edge but a bit softer sounding than it normally was.
"Yeah..." Takanosuke responded a bit tiredly, a smile managing to make its way onto his face, "Thanks for taking care of me, Sakyo." A soft hum came in response.
"Don't worry about it." The redhead said kindly, which Takanosuke knew was his way of saying 'you're welcome'.
"How long was I asleep?" The Griffin Blader asked, managing to push himself up a bit into a sitting position, propping the pillow behind him up a bit so he wasn't leaning awkwardly against the headboard.

"5 hours." Sakyo responded bluntly, "It's 6:00 in the afternoon.. How are you feeling?" Keeping the wet cloth pressed against his forehead, Takanosuke looked over at Sakyo with his cerulean eyes, a smile on his face.
"Better, now." He said with a hint of a relieved sigh, "Thanks again Sakyo." Sakyo said nothing in response, and simply turned to sit down on the other bed in the hotel room, crossing one leg over the other and crossing his arms over his chest as well.

"What do you remember?" The Dragoon Blader asked, watching from the corner of his eye as Takanosuke reached over and took a few sips of the water on the table before setting it down.
"Umm.." The blonde began in thought, seemingly trying to recall at that there was before he had blacked out earlier that day.

But he remembered.

He remembered everything from the start of his headache to the moment he fell.

He remembered the things that he had seen when he had looked at Sakyo, which he knew had some sort of meaning but couldn't pinpoint what it was.

He remembered, but he wasn't going to tell Sakyo all of it - Seer or not, it would make him sound a bit crazy.
"I just kind of..." Takanosuke began, trying to summon up the right words, "I remember talking to you and stuff, and then I just... Had a headache, a really bad one, and then I felt dizzy.. And I kind of... Passed out, I think."
Of course he had passed out.
For whatever reason, he definitely had, whether it be because of whatever he had seen or it actually had been heatstroke, he wasn't sure of.
Sakyo looked at him for a moment with his crimson eyes, staring at him intently with his normal cold expression put back on his face.
Though it was comforting to see Sakyo's features soften up a bit while he had been taking care of him, the way he usually looked with that hard look seemed to suit him a lot better - even despite the concerned gleam in his crimson irises.

"I see.." The Dragoon Blader said simply, looking away from the blonde and instead staring at the wall opposite him, "I don't know what else it would be other than heat stroke.. You're lucky, to say the least."

"Yeah, I guess so..." Takanosuke said thoughtfully, "I'm okay now though, Sakyo." The Griffin Blader dabbed the wet cloth on his forehead, and then dabbing at his neck and the upper part of his chest, half-surprised to suddenly realize that he wasn't wearing the hoodie he usually had on.
His cerulean eyes quickly picked up that it was hanging over a chair at the desk in the room, while he was left in his dark blue-purple tank top.
"If you say so." Sakyo said gruffly in response.

He had already checked Takanosuke's forehead before the blonde had woken up, and his fever had dissipated in the few hours that he had had of rest.
If it had indeed been heat stroke that had caused the boy to collapse, then it had gone away in record time.
It should have lasted for a couple days at the least, should have left the blonde feeling sick and uncomfortable for hours on end, but Sakyo wasn't going to complain. He knew that Takanosuke definitely wasn't going to either.
"If you think you're okay to move around, then good." Sakyo said, glancing towards the Griffin Blader with his crimson eyes for a moment, "There's not much here, I already looked."
Takanosuke was surprised by that. He hadn't expected Sakyo to go look around the small portion of town that was Ibaraki, since taking care of him had seemed to be his only priority when he was awake 5 hours ago - but it was a good thing to know whether or not there was anything in this small town.
"So when are we going?" Takanosuke asked, dabbing his already damp forehead with the cloth in his hand.
"Tonight, if you're okay to do that." Sakyo replied gruffly, his voice as hard as his face always was, "I'd rather not do it by day, after what happened earlier with you."

"Okay.." The blonde said in agreement, thinking that traveling by night - when it might be maybe just a little bit cooler - was probably the best course of action.
Either way, they were sticking to the road, so there wasn't much of a chance that they were going to get lost. With just a nod in response, Sakyo stood from the edge of the other bed he was sitting on and made his way over to the small bathroom the room contained, leaving Takanosuke alone for just a minute or so once more.
Takanosuke dabbed his shoulders and chest with the cold cloth in his hand, sighing softly as he let his head fall back gently against the headboard with the pillow underneath him.
Taking another sip of water, which did enough to lubricate his mouth a bit, the blonde couldn't help but let his mind wander.
His grandmother had taught him a few things about different signs and omens when he was a kid, but he had never really cared enough to pay too much attention.
He had mostly been interested in all of the visions that she had, finding them intriguing with the vague messages and their meanings, but the omens he had never bothered to look into.
He knew whatever he saw meant something, and he knew that it meant something when he had looked at Sakyo and immediately saw those things - maybe it was what caused the small sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.