Chapter 6

Nasté was pacing. She had been for nearly an hour and though the panic she felt when the troopers reappeared from the forest had faded she still felt slightly frantic. No one could tell her what had happened because no one honestly knew, and somehow Nasté understood that she would not be told even if they did.

Toma had carried Jun back to the house and the boy had been completely unresponsive since. He seemed to be asleep, or perhaps unconscious, but when questioned Toma would confirm nothing. Instead, the warrior of strata marched straight to Jun's room with Shin close on his heels, and they had not been seen since.

The other troopers were arguing rather hotly in the sitting room about what had happened and Nasté could hear every word even though she stood halfway across the house. From her distant perspective it seemed that Ryo and Seiji were doing most of the talking and Seiji, strangely, seemed quite irate while Ryo vehemently denied that he knew anything. Nasté wondered if Ryo had forgotten the day that he had accompanied her and Toma to the hospital or if he was deflecting for Jun's benefit.

"He's lying to us," Seiji said, "we all know it."

"You don't know that," Ryo replied emphatically. "He hasn't said much of anything to any of us lately, how can he be lying if he hasn't said anything?"

"Then he is withholding something from us and there's no doubt in my mind that it's important."

Nasté heard Shu clear his throat. "We all know that he doesn't usually have much to say," said the warrior of rock, "he's not the kind of person to say anything that doesn't need to be said."

"He's also not the kind of person who would lose control of himself in the middle of a friendly fight," Seiji retorted smartly. "Or the kind to punch the people trying to help him before running off to god knows where."

"Actually," Ryo began, "he has been known to—"

"That's not the point!" Seiji roared, clearly at the end of his patience. "You don't think it's remotely odd that he's been so stressed yet hasn't said a word to anyone? He won't even talk to Nasté, because you know if he had she would have told us about it. We've been through this before; the lying, the anger issues, not telling us things. And do you remember what was happening then?"

No one spoke for a long time after Seiji trailed off. Even Nasté stopped pacing to think about what had just been said. She had not given any thought to Jun's past since the unusual behavior had started, but now that Seiji mentioned it the conclusion did not seem such a stretch. Jun had once been unwittingly connected to the Yakuza; he had been a trafficker of illegal substances. Perhaps they had found him again and put him back to work. Perhaps he had been threatened.

But Jun had not been going out. He had barely left the house at all in the last months except for class or work. And when he was at home he spent all of his time locked away in his bedroom and Nasté had never stopped to think of what he might be doing. She always assumed that he was studying or sleeping, but now that she thought about it his sleep patterns were unusual as well. Some days he was practically comatose when he walked through the door and other days she could hear him rustling about through the small hours of the morning.

Nasté had heard about students using stimulant substances to maintain focus, study long hours, and work otherwise unmanageable loads. She couldn't help but wonder if Jun had gotten involved with it all. It would explain his erratic behavior, the inconsistency in his sleep, and because he worked with doctors every day it would not be terribly difficult for him to acquire such things.

When Nasté looked back down the hall toward Jun's bedroom her heart sank. He had come so far since he moved in with her and the prospect of a relapse into delinquency was almost more than she could bear. She could only hope that Shin and Toma were making some progress, if Jun was awake at all.

But Shin and Toma were making no headway at all, despite the fact that Jun had been awake for some time. The three sat in what was no total silence since Jun had simply refused to speak. Instead he sat on his bed with his knees curled to his chest and stared at the wall, and any time a question was asked the only response he might give would be to close his eyes and breathe deeply.

Toma and Shin were out of ideas. Every question, comment, or guess that they made about what had happened had, at first, been met with a quiet but firm "I don't know." But the moment that Toma suggested that Jun had been seeing things again the boy went completely mute, leaving the two warriors exchanging looks of confusion as they wondered what might be going through Jun's mind. They could not see the slightly fearful expression on his face.

Jun could not get past what had happened in the fight against Ryo and Seiji. His armor had felt more uncomfortable than ever, even before the spar began, and at the end of it all he lost control entirely. The act of directing his armor, which by now was second nature to him, had failed. In any normal circumstance he would have easily dodged Seiji's blow but in that moment Jun was unable to tell what was the shadow and what was Jun. The two consciousnesses had collapsed into each other and, more than that, he had felt keenly the bite of Seiji's nodachi on his back. He had been yards away from the blade.

Jun's armor had betrayed him, and the thought was more than a little terrifying. He had been warned of betrayal, but he had thought that it referred to the other troopers. He had never considered that his armor or the shadow it called had the capacity to forsake him. But now that it had, Jun knew that he had failed. He disregarded the first hallucination, had done nothing to change, and had apparently set in motion events that he did not know how to reverse.

He rolled the warning through his mind again and again: alter your path, they will betray you, they will die.

When the bedroom door burst open the three warriors inside jumped, as startled by the noise as they were surprised that someone would barge in so suddenly. Ryo stood in the doorway looking as angry as he did disappointed, and behind him stood Shu who shared the same dejected expression.

"Seiji is gone," Ryo said flatly and then looked to Jun. "He's really angry with you, you know, and I can't really blame him. "

Jun looked up suddenly. "What did he say?"

Toma and Shin exchanged even more surprised looks, incapable of understanding how they could have tried for an hour to get Jun to speak but Ryo could do so with a simple statement.

"He said that he was sorry," Ryo said, "multiple times. But then he said that he just couldn't help you anymore. He said that he felt like you were working against your best interests, which puts you against us. He said that if you didn't want his help that he wasn't going to offer it."

"He said a lot of things," Shu added when he saw how wide Jun's eyes had become, and though his vague extension of Ryo's thought was meant to calm Jun down it seemed that the statement had had the opposite effect.

"Get out, all of you," Jun said firmly, though there was no anger in his voice. "Get out of here and go home."

"Why?" Toma said.

Panic welled up then and Jun did not know how to respond. Again, he could tell them the truth, that he had been warned, that he had seen Mai, she had told him that he had failed to heed her warning, that he was coming and that because of Jun's inaction everyone was in danger. But he did not know if such a thing would make the whole situation worse. The betrayal had begun, first his armor and now Seiji, and it was entirely possible that the rush to action that would follow Jun's admission would lead the troopers into more trouble than if he remained quiet.

When he looked to the others to gauge their reaction they all looked stunned but remained unmoving. It was clear to Jun that none of them had any intention of going anywhere at all, regardless of what he might say. They were concerned, that much was obvious, and Jun worried that they might never leave him alone.

"Fine," Jun cried and leapt from the bed. "If you all won't leave then I'll go."

He stormed across the room and retrieved a jumper from his closet and made for the door, his gaze set on the floor as he walked. He could feel the troopers' eyes on him, his skin crawled, and when he reached the exit Ryo stepped aside automatically, looking as dumbfounded as ever.

When Shu did not move Jun shot him an angry glare. When glaring did not produce the desired results, Jun mustered all the nerve he had and shoved his way past, and though Shu stumbled slightly against the sudden body check he kept his footing expertly.

Jun's heart was pounding so loudly that the confused cries of the others were unrecognizable. He was terrified and did not know where he might go, only that he had to leave. He believed with all of his heart that as long as the others were close to him, in proximity or in spirit, they would be in danger, and the idea that they might want to follow him made him angry despite the sense it made.

He was nearly to the front door when Nasté caught him by the arm. Her grasp was gentle but firm and when Jun turned around her delicate face was weighed with deep concern.

"Where are you going? You can't leave here in your condition," she said quietly.

Jun pulled his arm roughly away from her and stepped back toward the door. "I can go wherever I want, I don't need your permission."

Nasté's expression shifted then, and she looked angry. "Why can't you tell me what's going on with you? Are you hiding something? What is the matter? Are you on something?"

Jun felt mutinous, and all of the panic and fear that coursed inside of him changed to rage. He wondered if that was how Nasté saw him, as a delinquent incapable of reform, as a burden. A lump welled in his throat and his chest heaved with deep breaths. Before he realized that he had been gripped by such intense emotion and before he could control it he felt a stinging on the back of his hand and watched, seemingly in slow motion, as Nasté staggered into the wall.

He regarded his hand, it was numb and his knuckles tingled faintly from the contact, then he looked at Nasté who stared at him through her fingers as her hands groped dumbly at her face, and then he looked back down the hallway to where Ryo, Toma, Seiji, and Shu stared at him with all of the anger that he had just released.

Jun turned and ran from the house with all the speed he could and hoped genuinely that he had just alienated himself from the others seriously enough that they would not follow. But all the same he was struck by the very real fear that they might follow him out of a need for retaliation. He had just hit Nasté, had backhanded her like an abusive husband, and simply because she had asked what must have been, to her, a reasonable question.

His emotions were out of control.

Ϫ

Jun sat atop a tall apartment building in downtown Tokyo, staring at what once was the wreckage of Tokyo Station and listening to the sounds of the city. It was the dead of night yet traffic continued to roll and a construction crew worked diligently to repair the broken building. A dozen people walked by on the sidewalk below since Jun had sat down, and none of them seemed to notice that he was there, his feet dangling ten stories above the street.

It had been months since he had been out like this, since he had run the streets of the city with no particular purpose but his own enjoyment, and he had not missed it in the rush of life. But now that he was seated there on top of it all his heart swelled with nostalgia. He remembered life without the troopers, how simple it had seemed despite the danger he was always in, and wondered how things might have been if he had not accepted Nasté's invitation for coffee the night that he was called to arms.

He grimaced when he thought of her. He wondered how she was doing, if he had hurt her badly when he had hit her or if he had just scared her. Either way he knew that he could not go back; the others had seen what he had done and Jun could not explain why he had done it, not that explaining it would make it any better. He had been completely out of control, his emotions had overwhelmed him, and he could scarcely remember the moment that he struck her over the sensation of rage. No, he could not go back, not until he could explain himself.

With a sigh he turned about, swung his feet back to the right side of the building's edge, and stood to make his way back down. But he stopped short and drew a quick breath when his eyes fell on a long shadow before him.

He had expected a police officer but hoped that it was a resident of the building who had heard him on the climb. But as his eyes slowly moved from the shadow's edge to the figure at its end he froze dead.

A cloaked figure stood before him, his hands folded into the sleeves of his robes, and though Jun could not see its face in the dark of the night he knew that the thing was grinning. This was the Arbiter of Souls, a malicious spirit that the troopers had defeated more than a year ago, and a being that had defeated Jun with little difficulty at all.

"Greetings, shadow," the figure said.

Jun groped automatically for the yoroi ball stored ever in the pocket of his jeans. He felt as though he should say something witty but no words would come to his mind. Jun stayed very quiet and watched intently as the Arbiter shifted his weight, refolded his hands, and leaned slightly forward.

"We have much to discuss, child," said the Arbiter.

"I thought you were dead," Jun said, and his voice sounded shaky and uncertain. He wrapped his fingers around his yoroi ball and felt it pulsing warm against his palm.

The Arbiter shrugged. "I am dead," he said. "Such is my condition. But if you mean that your friends were to have destroyed me then I am afraid that you are mistaken."

"What do you want?"

"I wondered when you might ask. I am not here to fight you, and for that you should be thankful because as I recall the matter you are no match for my power. I am here to talk, to discuss a matter that you are quite familiar with by now."

Jun narrowed his eyes but remained silent.

"Yes, I thought you might put on that defiant face," said the Arbiter. "But there is no need for that. To business, then. I have been made to understand by my eyes in the mortal world that your friends are in some kind of danger—"
"Yeah," Jun retorted, "from you."

The Arbiter laughed sharply and then fell suddenly quiet. "No, no. Your escapade through my tower left me without much of my army, short followers, and without my commanders. With thanks to you and your fellows I lost much of my control over the nether realm. I commend you for decimating my empire in such a way; I have had no time to plot against this world."

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"I mentioned that you left me without a commander."

"Are you propositioning me?" Jun said incredulously.

"You were once told that the armor you claim was not meant to be worn by a mortal," the Arbiter said and he began to walk about. "Do you recall that conversation?" He paused and looked to Jun, who stood as stone and looked irate. "Certainly, you do. But somehow, given your arrogance, I doubt that you have heeded that warning."

"What are you getting at?"

"That armor was not made for you, boy, and it is destroying you. You must have noticed by now, an attunement to the realm of spirit, unexplained pains, worries, anger? You have put yourself in danger and you will put your friends in danger, but I can offer you respite. You have merely to come with me, to assume a role as commander of the spirits in my ranks, and—"

"Absolutely not," Jun interrupted.

Jun produced the burning yoroi ball from his pocket, oblivious to the heat, and called forth the black armor without a second thought. The plates settled on his body in seconds and felt warm against his skin. His blood pumped with adrenaline and he felt no discomfort then, and so Jun pulled the glaives from their seats on his back and stood ready for a fight.

"I ask you one more time, boy. Come with me quietly, cooperate with me, and I can protect you from that armor, which you clearly do not understand, and protect your friends from the dangers you have brought upon them."

Jun lunged forward and thrust his left blade out in a wide arc that passed far short of the target. He turned on his heel through the strike and moved his blades to parry a blow that did not come, and instead ended up watching angrily as the Arbiter stepped back, his featureless face hidden beneath the deep hood of his cloak.

"So it shall be," the Arbiter growled and he threw up his hands suddenly.

Jun's armor erupted with heat. It seared against his skin so fiercely that he cast it away automatically, but even his under gear burned. Agonized, he fell forward to his knees and glared at the spirit before him, who made no sound at all as he stepped forward. Instead the Arbiter reached down and grasped Jun firmly by the plate on his chest and pulled him to his feet.

"Stupid boy," spat the Arbiter. "I will not play nice with you forever. You embarrassed me, destroyed half of the army that I worked so hard to construct, and I will not forgive you for that."

By now the Arbiter had lifted Jun from the ground completely, but the warrior did not notice. He squirmed despite every effort to remain stone faced and he cried out against the burning armor. His body was on fire and the under gear would not release.

"You will sit in my hall, you will work under my command, and because of your defiance you will watch as your world burns."

Jun felt his body connect with the stone of the rooftop and he lay there for a long while, curled and terrified. He heard the Arbiter utter a phrase so foreign that it did not sound as words, and another moment later the world around him was enveloped in a dark gray haze that Jun recognized at once as the spherical prisons utilized by the Arbiter and his ilk.

Even if Jun had had the energy to struggle it would have been futile. The prison was inescapable, impenetrable, and though he could hear every word the Arbiter spoke his cries could not be heard through the walls. All he could do was to stare at the Arbiter and watch as the world floated away.

He closed his eyes against the pain in his body and did not open them for a long while after.