The Echo

 “Marcel,” said Jin softly.

The name resonated like a forbidden spell. Inês could feel all of the memories and what ifs bubbling to the surface of Jin's mind as he uttered it, shell-shocked.

Marcel had landed before them without a sound, in his own time. Jin stepped forward with diffidence, looking straight into the boy's grey, unfilled eyes. The sentai's demeanor, straight and unblinking, radiated with cold, alien control.

“Marcel,” repeated Jin. “It's me.”

With a swift, unyielding stance, Marcel bounded forward.

“No!” screamed Lu.

She leaped to combat. Despite her firepower having been extinguished, her physical body still retained tremendous strength. She grabbed Marcel by the shoulders and threw him, face first, into the dirt. He crashed into the ground with a bone-breaking toll.

“Wait!” yelled Jin. “It's still him, even if he's being controlled.”

Marcel rolled away and flew off with a quick rustling of his sokutai. Finding refuge on a bare maple tree branch, he wiped the blood from his mouth, unfazed. At the same time, the titanic gantlet opposing the megatruck and the Yuki-onna was still raging; the robot's blinding beams hatching the night sky in technicolor streaks, sometimes returned by the shrine mirror.

Under the cover of a flurry of sudden flashes, he vanished. The branch he'd just left swayed lightly, still. They looked around frantically, probing the darkness for his presence. There was a quietude among the chaos. Then, he attacked; surging from the woods behind the now smoldering shrine, almost horizontal and parallel to the floor, he hit Lu with the full brunt of his body, sending her wheeling against a broken stone lantern with a sordid sound.

“Lu!” Inês cried out.

She ran to her, steering clear of the lasers and pixelated debris. She kneeled down next to her with Debuu-san, who's pompon tail and triangular ears trembled in chorus; Lu was conscious, but in rough shape. Trying to get back up, she winced, cupping the back of her head with her hand.

“Somehow, that felt worse than the truck,” she said, grimacing in pain.

Marcel stood a few paces away, glaring an empty stare. Inês positioned herself in front of Lu and stood tall.

“What now?” she asked. “Are you going to beat me up, too?”

Inês balled her fists, ready to fight. Marcel remained silent, seemingly impervious to her words. Above them, the rumble of the battle raged on; laser-beams plastering on the giant mirror with a staccato rhythm.

From the side, Jin stepped into view, cautiously. He moved toward Marcel with his hands up, not in a defensive position, but as if to show he wasn't going to try anything.

“Let me speak with him,” he told Inês.

He placed himself halfway between the both of them, his eyes intensely fixated on Marcel.

“Marcel,” he started. “You know this isn't you. You're a good person, you don't want to hurt us. We're your friends.”

Marcel didn't respond. The long sleeves of his sokutai danced with the wind, but he remained perfectly still.

“I know you were scared of what might await you outside,” Jin continued. “You thought living out the rest of your days here might be better than getting out and maybe being dead already, or having to go back to a life of pain and secrecy, but look at you now: you're not saving anyone. You could pretend your life had a purpose before, that it meant something because those fragments of people were made to tell you so, but now… you're just a brute.”

With a glint of his mirror fan, Marcel struck Jin in the face, drawing blood. A large gash permeated his cheek, from his right ear to his nose. Jin wiped it with his sleeve, wincing.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” he asked as if the strike hadn't happened. “It was just the two of us in this very shrine. My heart about skipped a beat when I saw you. I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. That maybe you were an angel, there to guide me.”

Marcel kicked him in the stomach, pushing him back a few meters.

Jin coughed and cleared his throat as he got back to his feet. He spat some blood before continuing. A beam struck the exact location where he had just been standing seconds before, vaporizing the ground into a mound of pixels.

“How about the House of Still Waters?” he continued. “That first conversation in the onsen; you were so shy, you couldn't even look me in the eye. You looked away the whole time, blushing.”

Marcel leaped forward again, pushing Jin in the cinders of the smoking shrine. It seemed as though there was less conviction as his attacks progressed.

“Or the night after the tanuki fight?” he asked, rising to his feet once more as Marcel grabbed his collar with trembling hands. “You held my hand and said you wanted to be with me forever. You said you loved me.” pleading, he added: “Whatever's waiting for us outside, we can face it together.”

There was a rumble on the other side of the yard; the Yuki-onna and the megatruck were now engaged in hand to hand combat, their every movement heavy with titanic weight, shaking the world around them. With a judo-like roll, the Yuki-onna sent the machine flying into the woods. The resulting tremor was such that Inês, Jin, and Marcel all fell to the floor. The shrine, having been incinerated by Lu's flames, was unable to support the shock; the walls crumbled with a forbidding sound. There was a crack and the roof collapsed.

“No!” yelled Inês.

She grabbed Lu and moved her away from the rubble. Setting her against a tree on the forest's edge, on the other side of the battlefield, she looked to Debuu-san for guidance.

“What do we do!?” she asked, panicked and adrift.

Debuu-san's eyes darted from the blackened wreckage to the shifting horizon where the megatruck was getting back to his feet.

“I think there's only one solution,” said the bug gravely. “Hopefully it works.”

There was a slow stir among the shrine's remains.

“What is that?” asked Lu, pointing at the sky above it.

Bits of darkened, smoking roof were jumping to the high heavens; one, two, three. Then, a figure emerged, tall and flowy. As it approached, right toward them, they saw it was carrying something.

Marcel came down slowly. Inês could see that his eyes had awoken; they were alive, complete.

Jin was laying half-conscious in his arms. They were both covered in soot and blood. He placed Jin next to Lu and took a step back, shamefaced.

“Hum,” he started, looking at the ground. “I'm sorry about everything.”

Inês stared at him blankly for an instant. Then, turning back to Debuu-san, she asked: “What can we do to help Yuki?”

Debuu-san closed its eyes and took a breath. When the bug opened them again, Inês noticed herself and the rest of the group reflected in the emerald pair, the halo of the distant beams shining their light on them.

“You can't do anything right now, but I can.” it said. Turning to Marcel, Debuu-san smiled and added: “It's good to have you back.”

Fluttering to the gleaming mirror still in the Yuki-onna's hands, Debuu-san looked back right as it was about to step into it.

“Don't waste this, kids.” it said with a bittersweet smile.