Thank you so much for coming this far with me! it's been a busy few weeks, so who knows when the next chapter will come? For now, our leads finally find each other...sort of. warning for body horror, liberal interpretation of Kanda's weird superpowers, not knowing what writing style to use for one person vicariously remembering through another who was sort of zoned out at the time. I hate to leave on another cliffhanger, but I promise I had a reason to!
In the real world, Road sprawled on the ground, panting. She'd pulled a muscle somewhere back there, which was easy to do in this small of a body. Thank goodness Lero was watching the other body, she'd have her hands full making sure this one didn't get up.
It wasn't fair! The closest she'd come to losing, it was to nobody she'd ever heard of.
She still had a few more minutes before she could catch her breath enough to get up. Her heart was fluttering like a butterfly in her head.
What had that thing been? Of all the questions she had, and she didn't have those very often, that was the really important one. If the Black Order had more exorcists like that in its pocket that weren't the generals, the Earl would want to know. Maybe this was a young one. There was always a chance. Innocence could make humans a little stronger for a little while, right? It was nothing like the gift of the Noah, but maybe that could explain it.
She knew before she thought it that that couldn't be.
Which was a lot worse. Troubling. Before she might have thought it was one of her family, one of Noah's clan who got lost and blundered into the Black Order's arms before they could find him. Skinn was already the Noah of strength, though, and there weren't many left who they hadn't found.
Her body was burning from exertion but, right now, it was cold as headstones. The sweat might have been a chilly rain.
It couldn't be him.
Road blinked once, staring up at the dim grey canopy as she tried to think of another reason. Two tears fell out of each of her eyes. It was good symmetry.
Had he come back?
She shuddered, letting out her breath before it became a sob. It wasn't like her to be this childish. She wasn't the oldest Noah for nothing.
Drawing her ankles up to her hips, she stood in one motion that looked uncanny even on an akuma's bodies. She took as long as she needed to brush herself off. The dress was ruined, falling around her in tatters. It was actually a lot better like this, instead of some drooping flower, it was a murder of crows. Lulubell was good for something, sometimes.
At last, she got the final scales of spruce bark off of the frayed cotton edges. That was enough time for her to calm down. Yes. There wasn't any reason to get worried over a little kid until she knew more.
She breathed in and out a few more times before she looked, shaking her arms out to let the blood come back to them. Then she bent down again. After a couple of tries, she managed to get a firm grip on the boy's body and dragged him, a few metres at a time, over to where she'd left Lero. Since this one was here and the girl was almost certainly dead, it didn't matter if anyone saw the tracks they left in the dirt. No one was coming.
"Miss Road? Are you okay, Road?" Lero squeaked as soon as she came in sight.
"I'm fine! Now won't you be quiet? I need to take a little trip inside this one's mind, I'm going to have to concentrate. Okay, Lero?"
"Yes, Miss Road! Of course, Miss Road! But you're not hurt?"
Against her best intentions, she gave it a pat. "A little blood just makes me look better. Hush."
She found a flat patch cradled by two big tree roots and patted her dress flat, then sat down cross-legged, back braced against the tree. Nothing was worse than waking up in a weird position, even if nobody was watching. Looks are important!
…
Kanda woke up drowning.
Kicking desperately at the liquid he was in, too thick to be water, too sticky to be oil, he broke the surface and flailed for any surface he could reach.
It was the first thing he touched. He'd been inches from the edge of this pool.
He dragged himself up and on to the ground after a few false starts, the liquid making it hard to get a grip, and spat up the contents of his lungs on to the ground. He tried to scrape the liquid off of his hands, then his eyes, finally opening them after a minute or two of work. The fluid seemed more like gel the longer he spent up here, hardening over his eyes and his nose as he tried to breathe. He had to keep clawing it off, hunched and stiff like a scared animal.
He'd never forgotten this place. The first thing he'd seen in this life. The birthing room.
Terrified, he scrambled to his feet and tried to find an angle where he could see his reflection in the liquid. He was—this wasn't a dream, he knew that, but there was nothing that he could remember before this. No reason to be here. Back here. It didn't feel like a dream, so what it had to be was worse.
Kneeling by the edge, he looked down into the swaying sea. He felt sick.
This wasn't right. He tilted back and forth, trying to see his face or the bright white lights reflected, but there was nothing. Then this wasn't the real world, either. He scrambled to his feet.
The hall was high and bright, with lights overhead and built into the white walls. It wasn't natural. Even when he lived there, the shadows never looked right. He liked the old stone of HQ better.
So he was dreaming of this place again.
The nightmares had stayed away for a while, just never long enough. He wasn't often aware in these ones. Usually there was something pressing down on him, chasing him, he only remembered being scared. Seeing this place scared him, but it wasn't the same. This was only the quiet feeling that something was wrong. He was never able to think like this in those dreams, either.
Kanda turned, walking around the pools until he reached the edge of the room. It didn't feel like he was dreaming.
Pushing through the wall like it was birthing fluid, he made it to the mess hall where he—they—ate. There was nothing and no one here. Kanda looked up, trying to find some sign of life, but the walls here were made of the same material. It was like white, translucent rubber. He didn't remember them being like this, not here. The tables, he noticed now, those were also white. Where was this? It wasn't real, and it—
Walking forward with a tray in his hands, Kanda found himself walking to his old table, the one he shared with—with—with—
He shook, but his body kept moving forward to sit beside Alma, smiling away. So he was back in his younger body, it was the same side as the kid. God, this wasn't a nightmare he'd had before. That would have been better.
Sitting down beside Alma, he set his tray down and froze. He could finally see his face reflected in his soup, watching his younger, smoother face distort over the specks of oil and outlines of noodles in the bowl.
No, it was moving. The face he was staring into was the one he used to have, and it was talking. He couldn't hear what it was saying. Damn it. This was too weird.
He tried to look away, but each time it was like he'd remembered and then forgotten to move, something was forcing him to stare at the face or taking away his control. Alma was right beside him, he reminded himself. Just look. Reach out and touch him. Do something. Like he didn't do last time.
His own face stopped looking around, and finally looked at him. The mouth moved. This time, he heard.
"I never knew about this, did you?" his face said.
Kanda tried to tell it to fuck off, but his own mouth was glued shut and dry. He was hunched over the bowl now, hands braced on the white, glowing table to keep it from pulling him in. Now he realized that his eyes were also forced open. They were so dry it hurt, and before he knew it, he couldn't see through tears. Except for the face. That, he didn't need eyes to see.
"You must be really desperate," it continued. "God, they put all this time into it and, what, it's just you? I don't remember seeing anyone else like you. What do you think of that? Your scientists did their best, but the only thing they got out of it was you. Isn't that sad?"
His mouth might be stuck. Kanda could still growl, though. He did.
His face just smiled, tilting up. "Well, this is such a nice surprise! I hope you don't mind if I stay for a little while, I think I'm going to explore."
Alma's laughs rang out as he lost his grip, falling face forward back into the warm, wet feeling of the birthing vats. Only this time, he was being dragged down, away from the weird white light and into darkness. He fought it. He wasn't strong enough.
When it became too much, Kanda opened his mouth and let his lungs flood.
…
This was the boy, the other one, she was sure now. The Dream wasn't meant to hold two people, the two selves would mix, the two sets of memories would blend. That wasn't always bad, she could still turn that into a torture of identity, ripping parts from both and mashing them back together into two people who were never born and never lived, but were aware of every agonizing second that they did. No. The problem was…more complex, but as she peeled back layer by layer of this creature's self, half of it matched what she already knew.
Which meant…
Road drifted through theatrical scenes of blood and carnage, ducking beneath drawn swords and dripping wings as she looked for what she came for.
The Dream was supposed to be unreal, her victims would always try to make sense of it and fight it, but their every move had to be aiming at a target that wasn't there and thinking according to rules that didn't apply here. Sooner or later, when everything they knew, even physics, was revealed to be a lie, they would shut down. She didn't break their minds, they broke their own minds for her.
She was real, of course, but they never found her. The Dream hid her beautifully, it was her mother, she was its child. It protected her and engulfed her enemies. Her victims were real, too, until they realized that nothing was real and they couldn't be, either.
Two victims, then, that was two real people in one Dream. How long could the Dream balance their visions? If one of them acted out, because they had no reason to hide, how long could it keep them apart? She'd never tried. She never had to.
Of course, the boring thing would be to just kill the dead boy and keep this monster under until she could figure out what to do with him. But the way their memories overlapped and matched, the Dream might be able to keep them happy for longer. And besides, she still didn't have what she came for. All this time, she hopped between the thing's memories to try and find the one she knew. Grey sky, dark stone. The dead boy's memories ended in the old Abbey, and this one had been there.
No wonder she hadn't recognized him. In the dead boy's memories, he was more like a shadow with eyes. His hands were stripped to the bone, everything about him was elemental, he was half a thing and half an idea. Instead of a body, he was a collection of sensations and memories. In the forest, he'd just looked like another teenaged exorcist sent to die before his time. True, he didn't look like the people of this land, but exorcists always travelled. He'd been ordinary until he started to move.
Maybe that explained it. Daisya only remembered the flash of movement before he hit or the sound of his voice when he actually talked in sentences. It didn't matter. They'd be dead soon. First, she had to know: when did Daisya become the dead boy she saw, and how did he survive to escape her here?
Road spent a few more minutes searching, letting the Dream do its work, skimming over strands of recollection until she found one delectably dark and humming with tension. It was the same time, the same scene, as Daisya's memories threw back at her.
…
Overlapping and echoing, she felt an awareness of the dead boy running along the castle parapet, on a night so dark and cloudy that the world was made of charcoal. The dark boy, Kanda, whose name was Yuu, she realized, heard the footsteps behind him and the dead boy, Daisya, saw the stones move around him. The dead boy ran. Then, he saw the castle shift and sway, stones coming loose from long-rotted mortar. The Innocence growled out a warning in the form of a bell, but neither of them were scared of that sound. The dark boy kept running, knowing that the mission was what mattered and that Daisya would be safer once they were finished, and the dead boy looked around, knowing that this Innocence was a wounded animal that lashed out blindly.
The wall above bellied inward and collapsed, but the dead boy only noticed the rock as something falling. The dark boy heard the noise but didn't look, heart already frozen at stairs that gave way in front of him. They both felt a fear that overwhelmed everything in them and made the memory blur. The dead boy stretched out a hand that the dark boy felt in the small of his back, and shoved.
Then the dead boy fell silent, and Road was watching her newest prey's memories alone. The child that was somehow stronger than any humans and angrier than the akuma.
The dark boy fell. There were so many other times he had fallen before, but she ignored those for now. This was the key. He fell, and he was frightened, but survival caught him midway and had him land on his feet. He knew that it didn't matter much anyway, because somehow his bones would never break, or they would heal once they did. She didn't understand, but that was what she felt, from the inside of those memories.
He landed and around him was grinding stone as he watched the blackened abbey stones pull together, crawling up around the bell that held the Innocence. He wasn't paying attention to that. He was looking for the dead boy, and he found him, arms outstretched, head and shoulders flat against the damp grass and body pinned by stone on stone. The grass turned black with blood around him as it was squeezed out of his body.
The dark boy threw himself at the stones, shaking. Though his memory was so frenzied with anger, with fear that Road couldn't read it clearly, she knew that he pulled half a wall off of the dead boy that no one could be able to lift. Then—the pain she felt stopped her mid-breath—he sliced open both arms with his sword.
She watched the scene from overhead, the dark boy only remembered it like that, kneeling over Daisya and not understanding what he was doing or what was done. Somehow, this Kanda knew that his blood would help, even though the dead boy was, well, dead!
Blood flowed out of his arms over his body and he even stood up, the tension in his muscles forcing his heart to work harder. As fast as it dripped down over the dead boy's corpse it clotted over, and the dark boy had to keep cutting along the arm to drain it, cutting to the bone and watching the muscle grow back over the flecks of white. It was disgusting. She could feel his hatred of it and how gross she thought it was. It was worse that it worked.
All along the body, wherever the blood fell, it would sink into the body and put a part of it back together. At first, it was hard to see. The blood knew somehow to keep the organs running. Then, bits and pieces of the spinal cord fell back into place. She understood the rush when the dark boy realized it was working.
But his arms were hacked to pieces and there still wasn't enough, and the dark boy feared that the brain would die without the heart and lungs starting up again. He turned the corpse over gently and laid it out, legs damaged but not pulped and torso crushed. The broken ribs formed Gothic arches over the lungs, which were still.
So the dark boy bit down on his blade and pulled it out, ripping off a part of his tongue so that blood gushed out of it. Then he bent down over the dead boy's body and took his head, put his mouth over lips that were cooling but not cold yet and breathed out, spraying blood into Daisya's lungs. Road felt the humiliation that he had, a body that could survive all this and still put itself back together.
Once his tongue was sealed up again, the dark boy tried to bleed himself from the neck, letting enough fall out on to the heart so that the ribs grew over just that part of it and he had enough surface to push down without driving bits of bone into it. He went through all the desperate motions of trying to revive a human that he knew, breathing air into lungs that he could still watch inflate and hammering on a heart that didn't have room to beat.
It lasted less than a minute. Daisya was still a fresh corpse when Kanda finally got his heart to beat, thudding wetly against the inside of his ribs as the blood filled it with enough life to keep it going. Kanda knew that the vital blood vessels should be intact by now, and the rest could wait.
Road watched, horrified, as the dark boy gathered up what had to be a corpse and ran out of the castle with the same speed and strength she'd faced, climbing the walls and landing on the hard ground in one jump, bones cracking and reforming. He ran, and put the body down at a tree whose roots and branches spread out in such a way that he could keep the dead boy's head upright and keep his tongue from falling down the back of his throat.
Once the corpse was put in place and morning was dawning, the dark boy cut himself again and let as much of his own blood as he could leave behind run down the dead boy's body. For some reason, Road smelled the fresh piney smell of the sap that leaked out of the tree instead of the stinking body or the tangy smell of blood. That was just what the dark boy remembered, with a mind as shattered as his was. There were other memories that belonged to Kanda Yuu that were the same as this one, and she would have to have a look at those.
But as disgusting and scary as this was, she had to be sure that this was what happened. The dead boy almost looked like how she'd found him, but not quite.
The dark boy folded the hood to make sure the head was propped up and leaning forward. He watched the bones and organs knitting together slowly, into shapes that weren't natural. Road understood that somehow, he'd done this before, and he knew that the healed body wasn't always the same, and sometimes it wasn't safe. He watched the skin grow over the sternum and the lungs, let his own tears fall freely because wiping them would cover his face in blood.
Then he cut his tongue again, kneeling beside Daisya's body, and let the blood fill his mouth and fall down his throat, hoping that it was enough to keep Daisya alive until he got back. There was nothing in him left.
Then Kanda got up from the spot, and Road knew that the sky was that exact shade it had been when she found the dead boy.
He was dead. She understood, now. He was dead, and whatever the monster she fought had, it had used that to heal him. Kanda. The thing that almost killed her.
What was it?
…
Kanda woke up.
He gasped, scrabbling as he tried to move up. Soon enough he was on his feet, his bedroll sheets falling down at his feet. He was standing on solid ground and breathing. That was important, even if he couldn't remember why.
It was dark out, but he could still see the backs of his hands when he held them up, and the outline of the ground was lit up orange. That's right, he could hear crackling. There was a fire here. And now he was facing it. He couldn't remember turning around. The tiny camp was set up on a flat ledge halfway up a hill on the edge of a narrow gully, hard to spot and hard to get to. The dry grass around them meant they had to be careful, so this place had been carefully scraped off and covered over with stones from the creekside below.
The tiny fire was sizzling, flaky and red. All of the wood was coal now. On the other side of it, a shape was hunched over and chalking thick lines on to a canvas set up to reflect some of the light. Tiedoll. Kanda must have gone to bed early. The old man never woke him up when it was his turn to watch, so it was no telling how late they were.
He ran up to the old man, pulling on the old leather duster he wore.
"Hey, what time is it?" he asked.
The old man just kept drawing. He couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. Usually he just painted whatever boring, dusty landscape they were in, but this was a tangle of straight lines that looked like brick rows, and smooth, blue shadows.
"Old man? Tiedoll?"
He tugged again, scoffing. The old man always got too wrapped up in his work.
"Mm, what is it, my boy?" he finally said, laying down a last touch of bright red in spots here and there.
Kanda forgot. There was something important he needed to talk about.
"We should leave early," he said. "They might be chasing us."
"Oh, Kanda," Tiedoll said patronizingly. He always did that. "I promise you that it's only us and the akuma out here, mm? The Asian Branch has learned their lesson, I'm sure of it."
"You don't know that!" he snapped.
And jumped, when the old man turned around and looked at him with the eyes of Old Zhu, red in the bad light.
"What don't I know, young Kanda?" he asked, still with Tiedoll's voice.
He waved a hand at the other canvas chair that had now always been set up next to him, smiling. Kanda sat down, staring at the chalk drawing as the glow behind them guttered and spat.
"It's not right," he said, trying to remember what was wrong. The drawing showed a stick figure, cloaked in blue and spotted red, standing in a mess of things that could have been bodies. "He wasn't there, it was Alma. Alma killed them all. I wasn't there. I saw it."
Watching the canvas, he saw the figures rearrange themselves. The standing figure grew shorter, but the red grew to cover it and the lines that scored along its legs and arms merged, moved, bled out of the rows they were in and scratching out one tall wing behind the red figure.
"And where were you, when all this happened?" the old man asked.
"I was falling…I couldn't—he pushed me—I tried to take him away, and…"
"And what?"
Kanda reached up like his arm weighed nothing, putting his hand flat down on the canvas. Somehow, he could see the lines floating over top of it.
"He was gone."
"But why were you even there to begin with? If neither of you was intended to live on past death, if your souls were not made anew, then are you really here? And if you were not truly born, then would it matter if you died?"
It made sense. The lines in front of him were sickening, but the shapes they made were so easy to understand.
"No…"
…
Kanda woke up.
He tried to open his eyes, but they were dry and grimy. Wherever they'd slept, it was dusty.
It wasn't a good camp. He was already aching, there was something digging into his side. Never mind. He was awake now. Some noise must have woken him up, since he felt like he'd been woken suddenly.
He cleared his eyes, opening them to see a wall of dirt. There were rocks in it. And roots. But this wasn't a bed or a bedroll. Something was wrong.
He got to his feet in one movement, hand going to Mugen automatically. This pit was tight and mid-high, reaching over his head but not by much, as long as it was high. Grass poked over the edge. He could jump or climb out in a second.
As he steadied himself, something brushed his foot. He wasn't alone down here.
Looking down, he saw Marie. Sleeping. He had to be sleeping, sprawled out in the dirt.
"Marie!" That should wake him up. Without ear plugs, Marie would wake up if you breathed wrong. "Marie, wake up!"
When he didn't move, Kanda kicked him. Hard. He could hear his heartbeat.
That at least got Marie to groan and turn, rolling face-up. Kanda kicked him again, desperate to get out of here.
"Get up, we're going."
Marie just groaned again, but at least he opened his eyes this ti—
The relief welling up in Kanda ran dry right again when he saw Marie's eyes running with blood. He'd never seen him like this, not even back then.
"Come on," he breathed. He was kneeling down beside him now, and opened up his coat.
And almost threw up. The buttons were the only things holding him together. Beneath them, Marie's stomach was open and spilling out guts, flesh, loose strings and wires, the pegs of the organum were detaching from smashed ribs. He'd seen this before, but not—never—Marie—
They had to get out.
Kanda moved. He shut Marie's coat and, heaving, dragged him up on to his shoulders. Shaking, he tried to remember where they were. Dark. Dirt. had to get up.
He stood, groaning, and tossed Marie up over the side of the pit before climbing up himself, on to the grassy ground. His eyes and hands were coated in dirt and blood, he could see now, but there wasn't anywhere it could have come from. He wasn't injured.
Someone else's blood.
Standing beside Marie's sleeping body, Kanda looked out over the place they'd been sent. In every direction, there were rows of open graves. Theirs was the only one big enough for two bodies. What—but Exorcists' bodies were burned, it didn't make any sense—
Reeling, Kanda stepped back to steady himself and landed on open air, falling down before he could react into the grave. It should have been a short fall.
It wasn't.
And as he fell, reaching up, Alma's face looked over the edge.
…
Kanda woke up.
His eyes snapped open, blinking back tears as he cleared his hair from his eyes.
Blood. Bodies.
His foot slid the moment he moved, slipping on the bloodied floor. All he could think of was escape, scrambling forward on the filthy floor and falling headlong towards the room he somehow knew was there as he ran, gathering speed with each step.
He was nearly to the door, broad and open, looking over a steep drop when he remembered—Alma.
This was so many years too late but—he remembered this night.
He tried to get his legs to move. They wouldn't. He remembered the smell and gore. He remembered not knowing if he was breathing or just pushing air in and out. He remembered wondering if he was tasting blood or just sweat. He remembered wanting so badly to run. He just wanted to get out of here.
But Alma was here.
He may have escaped that day, but he kept coming back. He could never forget.
Every time he stripped and saw the marking on his skin he knew that he could never be a human. Just a walking doll, dressed in humans' clothes, ready to be puppeted. He didn't hate it. He just knew. No matter where he went, this was the place he'd return, not HQ, here.
So Alma had to be here.
Just as he wrenched his foot off the floor, something pulled him back with a laugh. Or maybe there was laughing before. Panting, he turned looked up.
Standing by the door, a face started at him, shadowed eyes and a broad jaw, child-like, framed by a mess of hair—
—and two marks standing out beneath the blood, curving down its cheeks.
"What…" he breathed, too stunned to move.
The face only laughed at him, his face—it had to be—and a different voice.
"See you, Kanda," it called out. "Let's die, now."
Alma.
It lunged at him.
"Kanda! Come on, we gotta get out!" Alma said.
Kanda dodged him, flashing him back in a heartbeat to that night. This night. Every night, where Alma was there and he could do nothing.
"I said, come on! You've got to die—"
"Alma," was all he said, shaking with fear.
Why did he have to kill them, god damn it! So the Eastern Branch hurt them, but wasn't it enough to live? Kanda was sick of mourning Alma, loving him and then shoving hi away. Why did Alma care so much, why did he let Kanda see it, if he wasn't going to stay with him!
"Don't go, Yuu, you're staying with me."
Alma charged him again, lashing at him with the one wing jutting from his back, and Kanda's body finally spring into action, kicking the kid—it was him then, it was Alma then, he had never grown older than a kid— in the gut.
"It's okay, Yuu! We'll die together."
Back under his own control, Kanda stepped around Alma's next attack and struck out, landing a palm strike at the base of his skull and grinding a knee into his nose as he fell. Too scared to let Alma get the upper hand, he grabbed him by the arm and swung him back up to open for another attack.
"Stop it, Yuu!" Alma whined at him. "Stop. Just stop, okay? I'm trying to help—"
"I have to kill you," Kanda whispered, reaching through his sloppy defense before he had time to use his Innocence again. "I can't—"
He twisted, and threw Alma against the wall, but he managed to land on his feet and shift back into the stance they'd practiced, hours and hours on end, the two of them in the East Asian Branch.
Kanda always beat him. Even on bad days.
"You can't what, Yuu?" Alma teased, bounding back over one of the corpses that covered the floor.
"I can't let you kill them."
He was ready when Alma reached him. Using everything he'd learned, all the reflexes he'd trained to a hair trigger, he moved through a kata to disable Alma's attack, numb his body, and drive him back towards the door. Maybe they could both escape, this time. But no. It always had to be like this, with Alma grinning viciously and Kanda fighting for his life.
"I can kill anybody! You're so mean, Yuu. I'm sorry I pushed you but just let me kill you, okay? Please?"
The wing flexed and stretched behind Alma, shaking off the blood of all the people here.
"I know what they did to us," he gasped.
He kicked Alma's feet out from under him as he grabbed him by the shoulders, then shoved him hard up against the wall, just beside the door. He couldn't let him get the upper hand.
"But you can't kill them."
"I told you, I already did!"
"Look—"
Kanda pushed him out of the door, holding him by his neck. The door was hanging open over a black abyss, and somehow its surface reflected what was inside.
"Look!"
Pulling Alma's head around by the hair, he forced him to look through the door-window-mirror to force him to look at it. Alma's grin grew wider.
But suddenly the room wasn't white and there weren't corpses. The whole scene went up in flames, burning, and Kanda could feel the heat on his back. Still, he kept Alma in a death grip.
"Look."
Alma's wing twitched, and Kanda knew that there was no other way to end this.
"I love you."
There was no other ending, but this was the one thing he could do. The one regret he could fix, playacting in a dream like this.
"Goodbye," he said.
His grip released, and he watched Alma fall to his death below.
But not before Alma's wing curled around his wrist, and pulled him forward with him into nothing.
It has been a long time since I wrote the Creepy Abandoned Abbey Arc! This is the full explanation of how Daisya survived getting hit by a ton of bricks while heroically shoving Kanda (who doesn't need it and doesn't want to be shoved) out of the way and how Kanda's powers are grotesque and horrific.
For clarity's sake, the last scene of Kanda's dream is supposed to match up to the last scene of Daisya's dream, the words aren't the same but the flow of the scene should be. They are both there, but the Dream shows Kanda and Daisya a very different version of the same events as the two of them accidentally drift together. For both of them, the darkest moment when they realized life would never be the same...
Hope you all have a great month! Time really does fly when you're intending to have this arc finished by June 2021 ;;