Let's get this trainwreck moving.

The day after the festival is sluggish, long, and nobody really wants to be here. We want to be asleep, in bed, and anyone who's religious would pray that there's no school tomorrow.

Shame that religion never gets you anywhere, of course. Doesn't matter if you believe in one god, or older, pagan gods; if they did exist, I'd have killed them. I have a problem with "higher powers," no matter where their authority might stem from. Once you bring them down, though, and prove they're not so powerful...they tend to not be too bad.

It's a crazy, lazy day. We get out from school, and literally nobody is around.

We're all in our dorm rooms, trying to get some sleep. I join those masses gladly, willingly, not even needing my medication to lose consciousness.

I wake up to find Miki standing over me. "C'mon, James."

"What...? Where?" I'm still groggy, and try to shake it off, but it's hard. Harder than usual.

"Nowhere."

All of my friends surround me suddenly, as do my brothers. Each of them reaches out with their hand, save for Rin's unmoving form, but somehow their faces show anything but concern. In a split second, before anything can happen, I feel rage well up inside of me.

So all ye sinners, this is the prophecy.

The dream, because that's all that this nonsense could be, fades to black. Replacing it comes a terrible vision, a nightmare, a future that cannot be and must not be.

A revelation of your own destiny.

The earth burns, and I sit watching it from my throne of skulls, but the lake around me has turned from water to blood. All around me, corpses are piled, and then there are crosses; bodies hang upon them, the dead who I recognize.

You had a dream once, a dream that you have sold.

All around me, the piled corpses have taken the face of my father. They grin at me, mocking my power, because of the crucified...those I could not save. Those I killed.

And now, my brothers, annihilation is foretold.

Emi, with no ankles to pierce, has a spike driven through her gut. I can see the tracks that tears made in her final moments. Rin hangs with an iron shackle around her throat, since she can't be nailed by the wrists. Her eyes, those melancholic greens, bore into my soul and judge me. Lilly's head is bowed, her frizzy blonde hair shadowing her face; her pale skin has taken a deathly pallor. Hanako hangs from her left side only, some cruel mockery of her scarring, and in her last moments she seems to have thrashed wildly.

So all ye sinners, this is the prophecy. The revelations of your own destiny.

Jake's dead face begs, asking why his hero would do this to him. I have no answers. Lucas' eyes are closed, in understanding and acceptance of his fate. Mondo's chest was opened, his ribs broken out, his lungs spread like an eagle's wings, and he died the warrior's death. He died with all his passion, all of his rage showing, screaming into the wind.

Sleep well, and dream on, a dream that you have sold.

Miki's eyes haunt me, her face gaunt, pain and suffering etched into every inch of skin she has. I want to bellow my rage, ask how this could have happened, I want to tear down their deaths and bring them back to the world of the living...but I am the king, the Unbroken Warrior. I aid no man, save myself. I kill all who stand before me because I will do so unto my death, and there are none who can fight and win against me.

And now, my brothers, this world is slowly getting cold.

I rise from my bleach-white throne, walking on the surface of the blood-lake until I reach the nearest crucifix. One by one, I knock each wooden cross down. Somehow, the act only increases my misery. They fall into the pool of liquid life, blood staining their skin and their eyes. They judge me in the way that only the dead may, that only the dead can do. I sink to my knees on the shore, the cracked and broken earth beneath me echoing my state.

This world of mine has become a dry and dusty husk, a shell of former glory that's now long-gone. All that lives has died; though my heart continues to beat and my body refuses to stop moving, I have died as well. These remnants of my past, of my former self, are all that remain of the man who won a thousand battles. No longer am I James Slae'im the warrior, the destroyer, and so this world reached its apex before crumbling. I am James Slae'im the friend, the helper, who needs to bring life out from this land of death and pain.

There's only one way to do that, though, and I'm not ready. Not yet. Something tells me that, even if it's only once more, I'm going to need the warrior. Within this world, where slain gods stand guard, the earth will drink blood again.

Only once more, however. That will be the price of my glory, I tell myself: an unwillingness, or perhaps just a flat-out inability, to fight after that final battle is done. Then my inner demon will rest, at long last, and I can make laughter come where cries of fear once echoed.

Until that day, however, my final battle looms ahead.

I wake with a jolt of shock, though I rein in the gasp before it can leave my lips.

"What kind of dream...?" It felt so vivid, so real. I had felt the faces of the dead, I had watched blood color their features a shining red.

It felt like a warning, almost. Some sort of precognition that, if I don't change who I am, all my friends will...die? Leave me?

That's the problem with interpreting dreams: they can be very vague.

Something, at the end, about a final battle.

Maybe I will need to change myself because, otherwise, I might be the one to die?

Just from thinking about it, my head hurts, so I look at the clock to see that I still have a couple hours before I would show up and be counted present in homeroom.

I go back to sleep, and this time it's thankfully a dreamless one.

Waking up, I trudge to class with the duty and sense of purpose you'd expect from a student, but I have to hold the flame and the void for the first time in weeks just to get through the halls.

That dream took a lot more out of me than the rest my body got from it, apparently.

I squeeze Miki's hand as we walk to class.

"Something wrong?" She asks.

"No, not really. I'm just kinda...weirded out. I'll tell you later." My reply comes, and she gives me a concerned look before hearing I'll talk about it eventually.

Then she becomes more concerned.

"Put it out of your mind. You need to focus today...midterms are coming up, and all that, you know?"

She smiles. "Yeah...yeah, I can do that. Promise you'll tell, though, after class?"

"...promise." She knows how much I hate that word, the idea it entails. Promises are not things I enjoy.

"I had a dream." I say. "It started out weird, and then it got twisted into a nightmare. The world was...broken. Everyone was dead, except me."

She's silent.

"You, and my friends, and my brothers, were crucified by my hand."

"It was just a dream."

"No, you don't...it...I feel like it wasn't. It was some kind of warning."

"I thought you didn't believe in gods."

"I believe in power, and psychics fall under that. I don't know what it was, or anything like that, but...one last fight. That's the feeling I got. One final fight, one ultimate battle. Everything's riding on me, somehow. If I lose, I die...but if I win, in a wrong way, then I could lose you and all the rest of my friends. There's three paths to pick, and I need to pick correctly."

"I won't try arguing with you then."

"That never ends well anyway."

"No, but hopefully you'd come to your senses and agree with me. It's just a dream, James. Don't worry so much about it."

I hang my head, and the silence between us is slightly more charged. Not angry, not negative, just...energized. Something's changed, but not for better or worse. It's hard to put into words.

Miki leaves my room without needing to be told to, though she gives me a kiss first. Once she closes the door, I throw myself back into the work I've neglected; not my schoolwork, of course, but the fact that I haven't worked on the style developments for handicapped martial arts in a few days.

After my visit to the nurse the next day, to check on the few bones that still remain bones in my body, I head into town by myself. Ducking into the Shanghai, I find that it's empty, though Yuuko is surprisingly waiting to wait on people.

"Shouldn't you be at the school's library?"

"Oh!" She says, woken from her reverie by my words. I guess she didn't hear the bell go off, and was spacing out. Not that I'd blame her, I'd let my imagination run wild too if I were sitting at a table and waiting for something to happen. "Sorry!"

"It's alright, Yuuko."

"Are...are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's all good." I slip into my more casual speech, and give her a small smile. "To be honest, I came here because I wasn't sure of where else to go."

"Can I get you anything?"

"Hmm...I guess, since I'm here and all. Are you even technically open?"

I realize now that I completely missed the "CLOSED" sign hanging out front, but the door was unlocked, so I'm not really sure what to make of it.

"Well...no...but I wouldn't really have the power to make you get out, and it's getting close to opening..."

The place doesn't open for another fifteen minutes, which seems fine to me.

"Alright. Should I wait until then, and come back, or-"

"No, no, it's fine!" She says.

"Okay then. I'll have tea...uh...you know, I'll let you pick the flavor. I don't have much preference, to be honest."

It's really just a way to dodge, to think more and talk with people less, but...maybe Yuuko can actually help me, if I tell her about this?

When she comes back, I gesture for her to sit down. It looks like she already assumed that she would, though, having made herself a cup of tea as well. Part of me thinks that was a little bold of a move for someone as timid as Yuuko, but I doubt I'd have refused her company even if I didn't want to talk to her.

"May I ask you a question?"

"Um...I guess it depends on the question."

"I'm having some difficulty. I feel like there's three paths I can take, and I have to choose with almost no recognition of what's going on. One path leads to my death, one path leads to the loss of everything I care about, and the third path ends with being permanently changed for the rest of my life. I have to pick one, but I don't want to pick, and I don't know which one to choose."

"Well...I don't know you that well, but you don't seem like the kind of person who would just choose to die."

The memory comes back to me, riding the motorcycle and approaching the bridge...but even then, with all the opportunity I'd needed, I hadn't done it.

"Also, even if it means changing, do you really think it would be worth losing everything you love? Not all change is bad, either."

My face hardens for a second. "Mhm."

"Ah...did I say something wrong?"

"No." It's true, she didn't. I don't know what I could've been expecting, but that's probably it. "I just...I need some more time to think, that's all. Hopefully, I'll get it figured out."

I give her a fake grin, and Yuuko's face lights up into an uneasy smile as well.

Once I pay for my tea, and leave Yuuko a very generous tip, I leave. After I get back to my room, I collapse on my bed and sleep for the rest of the day.