Sorta Roukiri and Routasu for this one

Prompt: Day / Night

Rouga sees Gao's loss weeks after it actually happens. He's been trekking through the woods, and ends up in ChouHodaka somehow. He can see a lodge near his location, but he's pretty much out of coins to pay for anything now. He considers stealing some food, but without Disaster Force it's pretty risky. But he is starving. Rouga watches steam and heat emanate from the lodge, and his mouth waters at the thought of food.

"Aragami-senpai?" He spins in shock, to see Hyoryu Kiri standing there with a shopping bag on his arm. "What are you doing all the way out here? And what happened to your hair?"

Why was Hyoryu Kiri here? Rouga hesitates, because the last thing he remembered happening to the boy was trying to help shut down the mine, but get taken out early. "It's a long story." He admits, and his stomach picks that timing to growl. They both stare at it in surprise.

"Is it okay if you tell it to me over some lunch?" Kiri asks. Rouga refuses to meet his eyes.

"Yeah, that's fine."

The explanation Rouga gives is a pretty shortened one, leaving out the giant beast and just saying he broke the deck case in a fight somewhere. Kiri shares some stories of the news that he missed while away from technology. "Gao lost in a buddyfight?!" The cup of coffee in Rouga's hands almost slips out and spills. "What?! When!"

"A few weeks ago, actually." Kiri says. "Gao-kun lost to Ikazuchi, the person in charge of the Hundred Demons. According to Baku-kun and Kuguru-san, he's been acting weird afterwards."

"Weird?"

"He won't use Dragon World anymore."

"What?!" The loss was that shocking to Gao? "He lost to the Hundred Demons…" Come to think of it, he had seen Sofia running around in a ridiculous costume calling herself Death Shido or something a while back using some cards called the Hundred Demons. Shido had been doing it too. Rouga had dismissed it as a joke as a result, but apparently they were serious.

The lodge Kiri's father owns is nice, on the other hand. There's a warm fire, and the news on a big TV playing next to the sofas they're seated on, around a glass coffee table. Rouga has a large plate of crackers in front of him, and he's glad Kiri's here, for whatever reason.

"It's day, but you can barely see the sun." Kiri says quietly, watching the coffee swirl around. "It's so misty up here lately, I'm amazed you found this place, Aragami-senpai." He says, forcing a smile.

"I've found a lot of things I didn't expect, honestly."

"It does get a bit lonely around here." Kiri smiles. "You can stay in one of the rooms if you'd like."

Rouga isn't used to kindness so easily. "T-Thanks." He mumbles, looking at the TV so he doesn't have to meet Kiri's eyes. "A lot is happening around Japan, isn't it."

"And next in the news, Gaen Kyoya announces a plan to create another power station on the top of Mount Fuji, which he bought two months ago for the Gaen Cup Finale." The lady on the screen speaks. "This will be an environmentally friendly system, with the source at the very top of Mount Fuji to transmit to the radars all across Japan─"

"He can't!" Rouga shouts, jumping up. "He can't! There's that, thing on top of the mountain, Disaster Force doesn't work on it! He's not going to be able to build anything there! I need to warn him─" He scrambles to grab his spear from beside him.

"Don't ever show your face in front of me again."

His hands only reach empty air. Rouga stops.

"Aragami-senpai?"

Rouga just sits back down, gazing at his powerless hands. He couldn't fight the monster, and he had no way of telling Kyoya about it. He couldn't do anything.

Kiri reaches over to pat his back soothingly. "If it makes you feel any better, they're not starting the project for another month. You have plenty of time to figure something out." He tries.

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Yeah. Something…"

Why had he even bothered starting a journey like this?

"Aragami-senpai, you're always focusing on Gaen Kyoya. Are you travelling to try and help him?"

"No, I'm just," Rouga hesitates. "I'm just, travelling. To find something."

"This is just my opinion, but I don't think you'll be able to find yourself if you keep looking towards Gaen Kyoya for the answers." Kiri says, and Rouga just stares at him in wonder.

Looking towards Kyoya for answers? But he wasn't really looking towards Kyoya. That much. Rouga looks down into the cup of coffee, watching it swirl around like the portal above Mount Fuji a month ago. He kept looking for something to explain his own weakness, why things hadn't worked out after waiting so long, why he was so powerless compared to everything else around him. He kept clinging to Disaster Force, a power that wasn't his in the first place.

He had just been deluding himself with the illusion of freedom.

"Yeah, maybe that's it." Rouga says dumbly, not knowing what else to say. "But I still want Kyoya to be my friend again. And I need to let him know about what's going on, or else something really bad will happen."

Kiri just smiles sadly at him. "It's fine. It'll all work out somehow."

Rouga ends up back in ChouTokyo. He's here a lot earlier than he had originally planned, but doesn't know what to do now. It's not as if he particularly wants to face Kyoya, and doubts he'd even get the chance to anyways. He wanders up the steps to the ChouTokyo shrine at the top of the farthest mountain in the back, and wonders if praying to a god that didn't exist would help his situation at all. The shrine is tall and it looks fragile. A single spark would burn the entire thing to the ground.

Back in the slums, nobody prayed to the gods, since they all knew that they weren't going to get saved. But his mom had prayed a few times before she died of hypothermia, leaving him alone at the age of 6. Sometimes Rouga wondered about her.

Kyoya had taken him to this shrine, along with Sofia and Davide and Shido, back when they were little. They had all prayed for stupid things, and made fun of each other about them. Mostly Davide and Shido. Rouga had prayed to never go hungry again and to get to stay with Kyoya forever.

He snorted at the memory. Both of those had worked out great.

"Do you believe in fairy tales yet?" Rouga hears, and sees the old man from before walking past some trees.

"Hey, wait!" Rouga yells, stepping forwards to chase after the man's shadow, but it disappeared into the trees with no trace. "Wait─"

"Aragami Rouga?"

Rouga turns to see a familiar blue-haired kid standing at the top of the stairs. "Ryuuenji Tasuku." He acknowledges, then looks back in the direction the old man disappeared in. There's not a trace left of what happened. If that man could use something similar to Sofia's portal teleportation, he would have at least seen or heard something.

"You're back already?"

"Things happen."

Tasuku frowns. "What happened to your hair?" His eyes widen when Rouga doesn't answer. "What happened to the Dark Core?"

Rouga takes the case out of his pocket, showing the cracked crystal on the front. "What do you think?" He says dryly.

Tasuku takes one look at the case and sighs, sitting down on the top step overlooking ChouTokyo. "It's been a long and tiring month for all of us then."

"Any sign of Variable Cord?"

"None. Any contact with Gaen Kyoya?"

"Nope. Are the Buddy Police able to get contact with him?"

"No one can. No messages in, only the rare message out. He's completely shut off from the world unless he's the one doing the talking."

That sounds like Kyoya alright.

It aches all over. No matter how much he tries, Rouga can't get used to this feeling of not having Disaster Force at his fingertips. It puts him on edge, and he can't stop panicking at the slightest sound. When they were little Kyoya kept talking about how easy it would be to control the world, but after actually seeing it so close up, Rouga doesn't know how he was able to think Kyoya would be able to do it. "The world's too big." He mumbles.

Tasuku looks at him in surprise and snorts. "Yeah, way too big compared to us. But some things you just gotta live with."

"I'm surprised you're still this upbeat after losing Jackknife Dragon."

"Well, if anything, my last time losing Jack taught me that it's pointless to curse the world when you lose something. Sure, it keeps you distracted, takes your mind off of it, gives you a target to point fingers at. But in the end you get nothing done, and you're not any closer to getting back what you lost."

Tasuku fiddles with his Core Deck Case, and Rouga doesn't miss the disappearance of the usual card that would be at the front of his deck.

"Don't force yourself. Recovery isn't easy."

"I'm not injured."

"You aren't physically. That's what you and Gao-kun don't understand. The damage is up here." Tasuku says, tapping the side of his head. "How many days are you going to spend staring off into space? How many nights are you going to spend thinking instead of acting? Nothing will change if you don't change it."

Rouga smiles a little. "I don't need to get lectured by my kouhai."

"You need it right now."

He breathes in the cold winter air, and feels a bit warmer. "Yeah." What a weird relationship, him hanging out with a Buddy Police member. "There are weird things happening on Mount Fuji."

"Weird?"

"A monster impervious to Disaster Force."

"What?!" Tasuku looks at him in shock. "That's a joke, right?"

"No, it actually exists. Seems more like a fairy tale than anything. I thought it might be a Darkness Dragon World monster that we missed coming through the portal, but it also looks nothing like a dragon."

"I see." Tasuku rubs his chin as he thinks. "What if it actually is a fairy tale?"

"Huh?" Rouga knew Tasuku was younger than him, but this was just strange. "You're a bit old to be still believing in fairy tales."

"That's not what I mean." Tasuku makes a childish angry face at him, which he just replies back with a raised eyebrow. "Even with all the research done, we really don't understand much about the portals between worlds, or how Future Force or Disaster Force works exactly. The parallel worlds function on different energy sources from ours, who knows what would happen if the different particles and energy mixed. It would probably be best to assume anything as possible, considering how little we actually know."

Different energy mixing, strange occurrences happening as a result. It didn't have to be a monster that came through the portal to be dangerous to earth… Maybe…

Maybe…

Rouga turns back to Tasuku. "Gao's recovering too. I heard he isn't better yet. Why don't you give him that pep talk of yours?"

Tasuku gives a little guilty smile. "We're not on the best of terms right now."

"You two? Not on good terms?" Rouga resists the urge to snort. Those two had been looking at each other like the other was the sun ever since they first met. It was pretty much impossible for Rouga to imagine those two mad at each other.

"We, may have said some bad things to each other. I'm looking for a good time to apologize, but I can't seem to ever find it. Trying to find Jack and Variable Cord is taking up a lot of time too."

"Grow a backbone, you self-sacrificing idiot."

"Guess that applies to all of us." Rouga mutters, standing up again. "There's something I need to do, and I can't keep hesitating to achieve it." He can see the edges of ChouTokyo from up here, and notes the Gaen Financial Group tower to the west. "I'll probably be in town for a few days. Do you know a place I could stay?"

Tasuku smiles a bit. "I think Gao-kun would be happy to see you again. Why don't you stop by there?"