Reconstruction

By: Aviantei

Chapter Three: Rejuvenation

Before the designated hour was even up his bar was filled with HOMRA members, and Izumo knew there wasn't any point left in waiting. Everyone was greatly excited, talking amongst themselves. He hadn't really given out many details in contacting everyone, the proper words to say had escaped him. Usually, he would only have to convey Mikoto's intentions and that was it. Coming up with his own objective was difficult.

What would Mikoto say?

The conclusion could only be "not much."

Anna was the only member not at the same high, but then again she never really was. Once Eri had left the bar, the young girl had gone back to sitting in the same spot as always. Izumo couldn't say for sure, but it seemed that, even though Anna wasn't quite her old self yet, she was at least the tiniest bit away from the desolate state she had been in.

"Hey Kusanagi-san, are we gonna start soon?" Yata asked, grinning. The teenager was practically bouncing in excitement. Normally Izumo would have worried that Yata's energy would have damaged the bar in some way, but it was the most alive the younger male had seemed in weeks. "I think everyone's already here."

Izumo let out a short chuckle to cover up his nervousness. It was now or never. These people trust me enough to be a leader so… "Sure thing Yata-chan," he said. For his next sentence, Izumo raised his voice. "Listen up everyone! The meeting will be starting shortly!"

There was a small flurry of movement to the tune of chairs scraping against the floor and conversations slowly being brought to a close. A few odd drinks were ordered and distributed quickly. In the end, Izumo had the entirety of HOMRA looking to him with expectant eyes.

"I've called you all here today because something important has come to my attention," he started. "Today a young woman by the name of Hayatama Eri stopped by, asking for assistance. Eri-chan is mute, and had other business to attend to, so I wasn't able to get as much information out of her as I would have liked. But reasons aside, she is looking for someone and has requested our help. I know you're all familiar with the person in question."

Izumo pulled his PDA out of his pocket, navigating through the menus until he found what he was looking for. When done, he placed the item on the counter, and the image of Totsuka's murderer projected itself for all to see. Some of the members exchanged whispers, and Yata distinctively stiffened.

"I know this may come as a shock to some of you," Izumo continued, "but I chose to agree with the request." The whispers grew to louder mutterings. "Now, now, everyone, calm down. Let me explain myself first."

"I bet you just agreed since she was pretty!" someone called out from the back. A light roll of laughter passed over the group without releasing much of the tension. Izumo sighed through a smile.

"While Eri-chan is most certainly pretty, that's not the only reason I had to agree." The bartender shifted his expression to be more serious. "We all know what happened three weeks ago. The main problem is that we really don't know what happened. Mikoto died by the Blue King's sword. We weren't told his body's location, let alone any of the details.

"This had been bothering me on and off, but talking to Eri-chan made me really think about things. SCEPTER4 has made no effort to contact us whatsoever. Just because they seem to have stopped investigating doesn't mean that this 'Colorless King' has been stopped. For all we know, SCEPTER4 may have him as a prisoner or he could still be on the loose. We don't know for ourselves if the problem was ever even solved."

Izumo could feel himself getting frustrated and took a breath to relax. HOMRA waited in pure silence, questions dancing in their eyes as they waited for him to continue. When he had spoken in the past for their king, it was never like this.

Did they always look at you like this Mikoto? Is this what it felt like to be on the other side of this gaze?

"I'm not Mikoto," Izumo blurted without thinking. "I'm not certain that he'd agree. But I really do think that we deserve answers. I think that we should confirm the location of this boy for our own well-being. Mikoto wanted to find him, and so should we. As his vassals, we need to assure with our own hands that his goals were fulfilled." He pursed his lips before cracking a smile. "And you all know me. I can't stand leaving a pretty lady helpless."

The atmosphere had changed, although Izumo couldn't exactly say how. Part of him worried that he had said something that HOMRA didn't want to hear. Even if he was uncomfortable with the job, he still wanted to do well. His poor actions only reflected badly on his king after all.

"I agree with Kusanagi-san," Yata said. His head was hung low. The teenager swiped a hand across his face in a motion that everyone chose to pretend like they hadn't seen. When he looked up, Yata's eyes were filled with fire. "I don't care about this girl or whatever, but I wanna make sure the bastard who killed Totsuka-san is really dead. I'll kill him myself if I have to."

Several HOMRA members spoke their agreement. Izumo intervened before things went too far.

"I don't know if that will be necessary, everyone." The statement made all heads turn. "I can't say for certain, but I really don't feel like Eri-chan wants him dead. She really wasn't clear, but she knows who this guy is. If she needs to talk to him about something, we'll have to honor that."

Yata stood up at a speed that almost made the stool he was sitting on fall over. "Are you saying we have to let Totsuka-san's killer go free?!" he shouted. His fist made contact with the bar counter. "Hell no! I refuse! There's no way! If that's what you're saying Kusanagi-san then I—!"

"That's not what I'm saying at all!" Yata balked at Izumo's uncharacteristically loud tone. Izumo would need a smoke after this. "There's no way I'd ever agree to something like that, either. Once we talk to Eri-chan again we can come to a proper agreement concerning our terms. If there's something she wants, we need to get something out of it. Now please don't abuse the bar, Yata-chan."

Yata pulled his hand away from the countertop to pull his hat slightly over his eyes, muttering "Sorry…"

"Everyone, I know you all trust me enough to lead you, but I can't go and make decisions like that on my own. If you're all okay with picking up this search again, then I will get into contact with Eri-chan again to discuss specific terms. I won't make any major agreements without satisfying as many of you as I can. If not, I'll call the whole thing off right now."

Izumo tensed up without meaning to. It was quiet as a graveyard in the bar. No one seemed to want to be the first to answer. Even Yata seemed to be thinking the situation over. Taking a chance, Izumo pressed on.

"If none of you are objecting I assume we're in agreement?" he tried. Nothing was said to contradict him. "I know many of you were not prepared for this, so you're dismissed until you can clear up any other obligations. But for those of you who are free, I'd like to start as soon as possible. It's very likely that our target has left the city. However, that doesn't mean we can be any less on the lookout.

"I'd like you all to break into teams to search en masse. I'd also like others to ask around—we have other pictures of the target, use those so people don't think we're looking for the same guy. Look into every lead possible. I'll talk to Eri-chan again and see if I can get into contact with SCEPTER4."

"Yes sir!" The resounding shout was almost deafening. "No blood! No bone! No ash!"

Distracted by the commotion, Izumo again missed seeing Anna until she was right in front of him. He smiled at the girl. "You want to try and find him?" She nodded. "I'll dig up the maps to make it easier on you, okay?"

Anna struggled to take a seat at the bar. She was abruptly lifted up and placed on the stool by Yata. The two male members of HOMRA looked at each other for a moment. "You're pretty good at this, Kusanagi-san," Yata said. The next second he was rolling towards the door on his skateboard.

"Thanks Yata-chan... Now take your damn skateboard outside!"

If he was to be asked how he was feeling, the boy wouldn't have been able to answer properly. Everything that was bothering him was all there at once, nothing more prominent than the other. Every uncomfortable feeling was set to an equal magnitude, so to pick one out to even begin to describe his situation would be impossible.

In short, the best answer would be "not well." Alternatively, "terrible" was also an accurate answer.

But that was never the response they wanted to hear. Every time they asked that question, it seemed as if they expected positive results. And every time he answered honestly they were disappointed, like there was no way he couldn't be feeling good after what they did to him.

His name was Yanamo Anso. He was thirteen years old. He was supposed to be graduating elementary school in the near future. He was supposed to be looking into his middle school of choice. He was supposed to be wondering if any girls would be giving him chocolate for Valentine's Day (whether it was confession or friendship chocolate was irrelevant).

He was not supposed to be here. He was not supposed to be clueless as to where he really was. He was not supposed to be cold, starving, and in pain every second of the day. He was not supposed to be frowned upon for not feeling well. He was not supposed to be shoved into a dark room most of the time and blinded whenever he actually saw the faintest amounts of light.

The experiments were definitely the worst. Anso wasn't certain to what was actually being done to him, but he could tell that they were experiments from the way the others talked. They used all sorts of words like "subject" and "testing" and "hypothesized" that had seemed to have lost their rational meaning outside of a science classroom.

The "scientists" never seemed to mind if he talked to them, even when they weren't asking him questions. And he certainly had things he wanted to say. The lump that formed in his throat every time Anso tried to speak was what was truly preventing him from learning anything. The lump only dispersed when he was screaming in some haze of pain, and that honestly didn't count.

"Hey."

He must have dosed off into some dream. No one ever spoke to him. There was no one to speak to him. The room where he stayed had no conceivable way of even knowing if someone else was around unless the door had been opened. And since that wasn't the case, there was no way this was real.

"Hey, you."

Anso was almost wary of being in a dream. He usually only ended up having nightmares that were so close to reality that they probably could not even be dreams and he wouldn't know the difference. It was one of the main reasons why he was so unsure of the exact amount of time he had been here.

"Excuse me. I can see you. Will you please answer me?"

Anso opened his eyes and was unable to see for a completely different reason than the usual dark state his room was in. That being the case, it took a few minutes to recover from the beam of light that hit him in the face. Once he did, Anso found that there was a small hole in one of his walls that hadn't been there before.

"…what?" he whispered.

"You are awake. I'm so glad I found someone," the voice addressing him said. It was definitely a girl's voice. "It was hard work getting through this wall."

Regaining his senses, Anso crawled across the floor to where the light was coming from. His eyes still stung and filled up with spots when he tried to look at it. That passed after another few minutes, and he was able to make out a singular blue eye staring at him.

"Um… Who exactly are you?" Anso asked, not knowing what to expect. If this was just a dream, he wanted to stay in it. It was pleasant, unlike the others. He remembered that it was rude to ask for someone's name without giving his first. "My name is Anso…"

Saying the words was ridiculous in a no logic place like this, but it almost made the encounter feel normal.

"It's nice to meet you Anso!" the voice chirped. Definitely a young girl at that. "It's not my real name, but you can call me Hisa!"

By normal standards, being stuck on desk duty was boring. To Fushimi Saruhiko's standards, being stuck on desk duty was the equivalent of being stranded in the middle of nothing, in a pure white that extended for miles and never changed so you had to try and gouge your own eyes out for the sake of having something to watch. To add insult to injury, he had been the one to volunteer for the desk job in the first place.

It wasn't as if he was a masochist for such things. That sort of statement was so far from the truth that it was laughable. What he was, however, was someone who didn't enjoy the prospect of exerting himself in even minimal amounts. Unless it was for the sake of his own personal interests, he didn't want anything to do with actively assisting SCEPTER4's agenda.

But that sure as hell didn't mean that Saruhiko liked his desk job.

It was really a stupid job if anything. While normal people didn't understand all the interesting tidbits that went into the running of SCEPTER4, they relied on the organization. Sometimes Saruhiko had to simply observe the city on his own, others he actually had to talk to people who contributed information and complaints to the organization.

Days when he was assigned to deal with the latter of the two were days he almost missed being in HOMRA. Almost.

Saruhiko had left his last affiliation mainly because he had been sick and tired of what they did. If he were to be perfectly honest (and he usually was, although it was a twisted, nasty definition of "honest"), he was starting to get to the point that he was getting sick and tired of SCEPTER 4 as well. Aside from the fact that there really was nowhere else for him to go, he might have left already.

Being nothing was just barely worse than this. And that just barely counted for a whole lot in Saruhiko's mind.

If anything, the saving grace of today was that he hadn't been assigned to phone duty. While staring down screens and worsening his already damaged eyesight looking for things that were never really there wasn't necessarily good, it beat out having to listen to civilians complain in his ear for hours on end.

Why they even thought he was a good choice for that sort of work anyway was beyond him.

Maybe at one point it had been somewhat interesting. After all, the city had once held so much more to it. Kings proclaimed their goals, and their clansmen went out to achieve them. But after the Ashinaka Gakuen incident, the number of active Kings had dwindled to the point that the streets were as good as dead.

How long would it be until new Kings were crowned? How long until their clans were formed, their doors opened, and their members running wild? Saruhiko couldn't say he was looking forward to others obtaining such a useless status, but the other results were perks he couldn't ignore.

I really wish that we knew all the rules for this. More of the selfish urges of kings who pay no mind to us, who think we don't need to know their secrets. These were his feelings that had been growing long before he had left HOMRA. Just thinking about it made him feel irritated.

Saruhiko scratched at a certain place right above his left collarbone. It had always been a bad habit, one he considered as such but never had really taken the means to break. Now it was almost comical, considering what he had always been trying to scratch at was no longer there. It had never been the burn scars, but the remains of a mark that had peeked out between them.

That mark had disappeared along with everyone else's. The only things Saruhiko had left to connect him to HOMRA were the aura and some memories he didn't even want. Trying to get rid of something that wasn't even there was pointless.

But it had never been the scars.

He returned his hand to his side and resumed staring at the screens.

Ah, I see Misaki's at it again, Saruhiko noted. It wasn't intentional, but he had noticed his old partner going around the city at most times. Today was no different. The lunch hour had long passed, and Misaki was surely desperately searching as always. Saruhiko didn't know what for, but he was certain the search had been a failure so far.

But isn't this… a different route than usual? I was certain he already covered this route in the mornings.

Double checking with earlier footage, Saruhiko found that he was correct. Misaki was riding down the exact same street had been on earlier. However, there was something different in his old partner's posture. It was a subtle difference, but Saruhiko could still pick up on it, even after all these years.

What would be concerning to most only sent a lick of interest through Saruhiko's mind. Zooming in on Misaki's face, he could see the difference. Where there had once been near nothingness was now burning with determination. It was so familiar Saruhiko almost couldn't take it. It took a concentrated effort to not get up and go challenge the other teenager to a fight.

Because for the first time since the death of the Red King, Misaki would be worth it.

But that wasn't all. Subconsciously, Saruhiko's eye picked up more familiar faces. After that, he could see other members of HOMRA that had joined after he had left. All of them were carrying themselves with something similar to Misaki's own determination. It made him reminisce and feel disgusted all at once.

It was serious. Whatever had caused it didn't matter because it meant there was something to do. He wouldn't do anything for SCEPTER4 he didn't have to, but he would do it if it meant he could get in Misaki's way. Because that was what they did.

The members of HOMRA returned the life into the city, and Saruhiko grinned as he watched them.

One of the things I wanted to look at with this story would be Izumo's feelings about having to fill in Mikoto's place. While it's something that seems impossible, he has to try his best anyway. I hope to look more at these feelings as the story goes along. Anso and Hisa's own situation will be resolved, and I hope to look more at Saruhiko's feelings as well.

Next time we'll look at more of SCEPTER4, check up with Eri and Hitomi, as well as meet someone new to get things rolling. Please look forward to it~.