Won't be another chapter out for a while, I'll be out doing things in the real world. Not that I got much done here over the last several months, but it's whatever. Take what you can get, yeah?

On a side note, I'm finding that I enjoyed the way I wrote the earlier chapters (errors aside) a little better than the later ones...including this one. Act Four will hopefully be written more in that sort of style.

Let's get this trainwreck moving.

I don't know what to do, right now, which leads me to doing what I always do.

I train.

Recently, my past failures have been coming back to haunt me. Not losses, there were none of those, but failures all the same. Metal bones, from the tournament's end, no matter that I won. I'll be dependent on transfusions for the rest of my life. In that, I know, I've failed.

Tombstones come to mind, of friends long gone who died happy and fighting. Had they not fought, they would still be here. Is that my failing? I want to say "no," that it was their choice and their will, that they could have surrendered at any time, but what if it was the fact that I was there, watching, that drove them to it?

I'll never know.

Miki, shy and bullied. I know I couldn't always have been there for her, there were definitely times where I wasn't around to help. There's no chance that those opportunities weren't seized. Did I fail, then, in protecting her?

Daiya's death, carrying the casket with Mondo, publicly going with his statement but inwardly knowing that his death wasn't due to recklessness...at least not his. In refusing to call my friend out on his lie, did I fail?

So many chances, choices, factors that could have gone differently.

What if Miki hadn't been there, that night, that morning? How would this have gone? Did I fail, are my life's differences beyond recovering from another path?

I can't afford to let these thoughts get to me.

I can't allow my mind to be clouded by doubt.

Whatever happens, I need to be able to face what comes with my head held high and no regrets.

"Slae'im! You're the last person I'd have thought to see here!" Misha's laughter is grating, and for all my gifts with staring people down she just doesn't seem to get that I'm not in the mood.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't feel it was needed."

Shizune signs. Misha translates. "What were you here for?"

"I need something to do. Something separate from other people, where I can think and zone out while doing that work. You're the student council, you know what's going on, you would be the two to know if there's something like that, which I could do."

"Well, now that you mention it...that's right, Shicchan! The groundskeeper took a personal day off to go do something with his family, so you could do that! I don't think you could finish it, but you could definitely work on the lawns!"

She laughs again.

"...it'll have to do. Thank you." Shizune meets my gaze, and the message between us needs no signing. We're still far from being friends with one another, but time has taken the edge off of our enmity. Now, we're simply irritants to one another.

There are two lawnmowers. One is a ride-around, to sit in as it cut, and the other is a push-mower moved by brute force. Although I would prefer using the manual one, there's just too much ground to cover form me to realistically get any meaningful amount of work done.

I turn the key, and as the task begins I can feel myself shift into autopilot so that I can think more clearly about what's worrying me.

It's not my "failures," I don't think. Most of those are just facts of life, unavoidable happenings. I can't change them, so I must move on...

...but then, what am I worrying about?

Of the people I've talked to, one believes my thoughts on the upcoming choice are ludicrous, one thinks I should change, and one essentially told me to die. None of those are particularly comforting.

That's when the realization strikes. Each choice, whether the one I feel I'm facing or any other choice in life, involves sacrifice. Sometimes, it's not even recognizable. In forming a relationship with Miki, I sacrificed my ability to maintain my distance from her, and also gave up the chance to have a relationship with Rin, Emi, Hanako, or even Lilly.

If I choose to die, I obviously lose everything...which might not be a bad option, given that I'm eternally dependent on blood transfusions to keep myself alive, but that would affect a great number of people much more than it would affect me. I'm not afraid of death, but there is the question of what others would do without me in their lives.

If I choose to give up everything I care about, it will be like starting anew, once again, save for the mental and emotional baggage I carry. People, places, things...All left behind, left to memory. In a way, that would be another sort of death, where I still live but the people I associate with will have a hole in their lives where I used to be. I'm good at adapting, but that seems like it would be even crueler to the people I care about, because leaving them would then be a choice.

I might be screwed up in the head, but I don't think I could actually be that twisted. That takes a special kind of person to pull off, and by, "special," I mean, "really sick."

Voices are calling from somewhere below, melting on the eastern shore. Rain is falling down on me, been waiting for eternity. I'll be there...

I finish at the end of the day; even though my thoughts are finished, there is still the matter of work. I need to erase all thought, all doubt, turn it into action.

Freedom for us all...and I wonder why, why my heart still yearns. And I wonder why, why the earth still turns. And I wonder why, when the sky turns black. I wonder why, but there is no turning back. For all eternity, for all the world to see, we're running high across the wind.

I take my fists to a fallen tree, losing all sense of my finesse in favor of brutally tearing into it. It's not good for my body, not good for my conditioning, not even sensible except that it makes it feel like I'm doing more, even as I'm doing less. One, two, three, four blows. The bark is chipping. Ten more, the bark's been stripped.

And when the storm begins to wash away our sins, we'll find the place where we began.

I can feel it again, the sense that something is wrong and I don't know what, that something is going to happen and I won't be able to stop it, only deal with it. Something cruel. Something bad. Something...violent.

I waste away my feelings by striking the downed tree over and over again.

Now, by moonlight there's a way...now, the world has gone astray...now, the time has come to pray...deep inside out minds we wait. Here in Dreamland we will not obey!

Pain flares in my hand, a shard of wood digging between two of my fingers. Blood begins to dribble out. For the first time, though, I take that splinter out rather than continuing to punch, which would drive it deeper.

I laugh, then. Not the warm, loving kind, not even the sarcastic or cynical kind that I normally give. This laughter is cold, and bitter, and full of hate.

Have I truly become so different from who I once was?

Johnny is a chemist's son, but Johnny is no more; what Johnny thought was H2O was H2SO4!

I laugh again. I can't plan out my life. When the choice comes, it will come; I'll deal with it then.

It's been that simple all along, hasn't it? I've just been too caught up in its importance to realize that I've been far too worried about it.

The blows continue, although they're now more measured and practiced than before.

It shouldn't have been this long since we've spoken. It's been...three days? Four? That silence between us, even now, bodes ill.

"Hey."

"Hey." Her face immediately perks up. Maybe she's not as angry as I thought she might be...or maybe she's just hiding it. I'll have to play the hand I'm dealt here in order to find out.

"I'm sorry I haven't talked to you in a while. I've been...trying to deal with that thing I told you about."

"And what did you figure out about it?"

"I still think it's gonna happen, but I can't really plan out my life in micro-increments like that. I'll take my swing at it once it's put itself on the chopping block."

"That's the best I'm going to get out of you, isn't it?" She laughs, and it's a warm one. "I still think it's kinda dumb, but whatever. We'll deal with it when it gets here."

She really isn't angry, then. That's much better than I might otherwise have hoped for.

"Anything you wanna do?"

"Mmm...not really." She hugs me, unprompted. While I'm a little taken aback, I don't really mind. "I missed talking to you though. Four days is a long time."

"Yeah." I move my head so that her body is completely cradled by mine as we sit there, looking up at the sky from this grassy hillside...it's a great place, very out-of-the-way sort of spot; Rin "showed" it to me one day when I followed her after she wandered off.

Rin does have a habit of doing things like that.

"What do you think about the clouds?" Miki asks me, pulling me back to the present.

"I think I envy them."

She moves her head to look at me, confused. "I meant, 'what do those clouds look like,' but I want to hear this story."

"Clouds are free, unchained. They don't have to worry about things that humans do...hell, they don't have to feel anything at all. They just move aimlessly, carried by the wind, going wherever they're taken."

"What happened to mister, 'I'm gonna crush everything because I'm the best?' That doesn't sound like something you'd say."

"I'm still here. Time's just made a fool out of me, made me a lot more introspective about stuff. I don't get how I didn't immediately connect the dots that night when I threw the rock at you, you don't look that different from how you were then."

"You were focused on other things. Stuff inside your head."

"Yeah, but...it was kind of obvious. Makes me feel pretty dumb to have not noticed."

"Don't worry about it. You're smart, sure, but that's not your specialty."

"Says the one who specializes in being a slacker."

"Personally, I prefer the term, 'professional procrastinator.'"

"That profession doesn't get you anywhere in life, I don't know why you pursue it."

"Because it's entertaining to watch authority crash and burn around me."

I laugh.

It's good to have Miki back.