Everything I’ve Done. Everything I Could Be.

Time! It’s a spell to control time.

Kira had already known that – Arata himself had explained as much, so it hadn’t come as any great shock hearing the obvious from Allie. He hadn’t tried to hide his intentions. Quite the opposite in fact; he’d brought her into the fold without too much complaint.

Perhaps that explained why she hadn’t been inclined to press further. He’d given away a large truth so the smaller, critical details appeared less important. He’d concealed them in plain sight.

But the crystal can’t possibly have a hold on him! It’s a memory crystal! It’s just that – memories.

Unlike Arata – who’d strapped it to his chest – Kira had never touched the crystal one single time, yet the peek into the future drove her forward all the same. She’d endured to reach that future. She’d taken life in its name, from the sheer belief in its immutability, its certainty. Her own private glimpse into what could be.

But if Arata had been witness to that scene as well, then did that mean the vision was not a vision, but a memory, and, if so, whose was it?

Blackstone acts as an anchor to magic. If it doesn’t move, but still ends up in a different location, then it’s not some workaround to natural law that’s been discovered – it’s the location itself that’s moved. Time is moving, not the blackstone!

Kira pumped her legs for all they were worth. She was trying to eat up meters, but her body had reached its limit for portions. Objects in the distance were already swimming. Cries for oxygen and food sang up from her legs. Her starved, weathered heart was tearing down its own muscle for the necessary energy to fuel her dash, and she almost screamed out at the Falcons driving by in their van for any assistance they might offer.

She thought of them bumping happily along, artifact pieces in hand, and a massive chunk of change in the blackstone box Arata had exchanged for their assistance, tied down to prevent the weight of it from digging ruts in their van’s cargo area.

The.

Blackstone.

Box.

Where had their territory been again? Past Shinjuku?

Kira, where did the box come from? Did he tell you? If it was meant to activate at the touch of his own blood…

A painful stitch sprouted as Kira pushed her body further into the red, teeth chattering as frigid wind bit deep into her paper-thin flesh.

---

Despite the terrors of the past several days, the explosions and multi-car pileups and unexplainable blackouts and the overarching feel of Death’s crosshairs sweeping the ward, Shinjuku’s pedestrian scramble appeared lively, as if these catastrophes had slipped into the background, becoming part of the static and harmless scenery. The police, the work crews – all fixtures now, like a new rash of dark freckles. Life was starting to calm.

But an arm was winding up, skipping stone readily in hand: the ward, a white lake.

Kira observed it from the overpass above, breath heaving out in clouds. There was an almost nostalgic feel to the view now, after all that had occurred. She and Arata bantering back and forth. His “confession.” That van, that unexpected womb – where all their trouble had been extracted from, though she hadn’t known it at the time – had come just down that packed road. After all that had occurred, she wished he’d been there beside her again.

Instead he was down among the crowds somewhere, setting plans in motion to ripple through the calm.

She’d hope to find him from up high. Instead, she only made herself an easier target for anxieties. Every second saw another one land on her skin and burrow in like a tick. They were finding her exposed neck and ear (and ear hole) particularly succulent meals. The warm slit and clotted blood of her remaining tongue had insofar gone untouched.

It’d been two days since she’d last eaten something that hadn’t once been part of her. There wasn’t exactly much of Kira to go around, and even less now compared to when all this started.

That fact would see change if the future held any stock.

Her fingers gripped the overpass railing until the knuckles turned white. Familiar nausea reared its head, but the wave was mercifully weak. A whimper compared to the roar of previous appearances. She couldn’t entirely explain why, how, or when, but she had a feeling Arata’s necklace hadn’t a hand in its suppression.

Somewhere in all the horror, a change had been wrought. Maybe it was the man – the her, soon to be him. Allie, more than anyone, would understand.

But it’s not a future you want.

Kira looked up to the cloudy, corpse-grey sky of the oncoming day. Snow was falling again in flurries to bury the ward further in cold and ice. Awful weather like this had no place save to validate the human need for fanciful puffy jackets with superfluous zippers and block traffic. It was like nature hanging an insect net. Keeping the critters she found so interesting out – keeping her in.

“Yo, Kira.”

Speaking of critters. Kira whipped her body around to face Arata. His unkempt appearance threw her out of balance. He’d always had the raw, unshaven appeal of an almond licked clean of salt by a coworker with questionable hygiene practices, but cold had given Arata a red nose and sickly pallor, and he carried on his person an ashy odor. She remembered the heat of a fireball he’d survived, so maybe cold wasn’t the only culprit.

“Arata, we need to talk,” she said.

“Sure. I’ve got a few minutes.” He walked over to join her at the railing, hands in pockets, sagging his weight against one of the light posts. “Wild day, huh?”

“Why don’t I want this future? What did you mean by ‘destroy myself?’”

“I’m surviving, thanks for your concern.” Wincing, he braced a hand against the railing. Thick layers of chalk dust coated his fingers. “How are you on this New Year’s Eve?”

“Those aren’t my questions.”

“You’re thankful for my rescue effort? Ah, it’s all in a day’s work for a thoughtful guy like me. No need to blow smoke up my ass or anything.” He extended the digits, closed them again. Open. Close. Open. Close. Hello. Goodbye. Ba-bump, Ba-bump. “We ended up knocking off the Don just like you suggested, so thanks for getting that all in order.”

She would have humored him with a hug if she didn't fear his hands picking up exactly where her father’s had left off. Frustration was already taking its toll on the light posts an overburdened maintenance worker had recently repaired. In the flickering yellows Arata flashed between his wan self and a harsh, shadowed negative exposed to desert sun at least fifty unyielding years.

She contorted her face into an expression indistinguishable from pronounced constipation, the very same Arata had worn for her what felt like years ago now. It was easier than before; she was starting to understand the male essence. “You’re welcome,” she replied, an edge cutting into her voice. Between that and the mask, he finally met her glare, frowning.

“That’s not a good look for you.”

“Neither is avoiding the questions I’ve asked.”

“Because it’s not necessary to know why. What matters is I don’t want it, you don’t want it, and we can easily avoid –”

“What makes you believe I don’t want the future we saw?” Kira’s hand balled into a fist, threads stripped from dry grass all that held her back from punching Arata.

What gave him the right to assume what she didn’t want? Had her actions not spoken volumes to the opposite? Who would have willingly thrown themselves at the Don of Dragons without desiring the outcome of such an action, bordering on suicidal? It was pure arrogance on his part.

The look of surprise staining Arata’s face was clearly an act. It had to be.

The other hand snaked out of his pocket: clutched in shaking fingers was the memory crystal. Its design was altered from before. The blackstone spines were removed. A metal pipe branched off each end, ending in a threaded hole.

“Did you not see what you’d done to yourself?”

“I told you as much, didn’t I? And you called it destroying myself! Tell me why, goddamn it!”

“I…” he tried to say, scoffing partway through the single syllable, as if she’d demanded of him something so ludicrous as eating a plateful of hot asphalt with chopsticks. “I thought it’d be obvious.”

“Enlighten me. Pretend I’m blind and an idiot.”

“You were huge!” He stretched out his arms as far as they’d go. “You were a dumpling on legs! You’d cut away all the parts that made you Kira and it was killing you. You were in pain. You were so alone and sad and needing to cover it up with smiles and your mind controlling magic so no one would see just how alone you felt. But I did.”

“So I created a way to try again,” he continued, holding up the memory crystal, facets of its structure diffracting the light that threw him out of shape. “All those years in the future. I created a way to bring you that second chance to try your life again, a way in which I could help you be who you were always meant to. A way to remain Kira.”

Arata couldn’t have shocked her more if he’d stuck her chest with his knife. Her stomach felt swollen with molten lead, her limbs locked in concrete as he threw the crystal over the railing and clasped his hands in prayer.

It hit her then. As the memory crystal halted its descent and remained in the sky, hovering, realization struck her like a falling star. Like the wicked bite of a centipede.

The memory granted her for experiencing, whose eyes in the shadows she watched her ideal self through.

They’d been Arata’s.

“But I wanted that future…”

“Trust me, Kira – no you do not.”

She gazed upon her fun house reflection in the rounded metal of the railing, and the changes done to her sense of self over the previous days: her shortened hair, her thoughts on eating, conclusion of who she was and wanted to be.

“If we go back,” she whispered, “will I remember any of this?”

“I’ll remember it all for you. You don’t need to worry about a thing.”

The crystal was drawing power now from the world and the accelerants in the ritual circle’s nodes, shifting through a multitude of colors as the circle itself took on an unearthly sheen of fresh fallen snow. At the threshold of years when the greatest change was possible would change be forced by the hands of wielders. Shouts of alarm were already echoing through the nascent day as power swelled in the air.

A slow grin spread across Arata’s face as the moment of success neared.

Kira’s fist blew it straight off.

Fury empowered her, and desperation reinvigorated her exhausted muscles, but the blacksmith’s bulk suffered little from his fall, pillowy snow ensuring no more than a bruise would mar his lower body. His cheek would be a different matter altogether. Bone cracked in his face and in Kira’s fingers. Inborn magic flooded through the point of impact, subsuming self and identity in a sea of boiling rage.

His foot shot out, catching her in the stomach to send Kira into the rails with a sickening clang. He leapt to his feet. She did not. Limbs feeling detached from her body responded only after a delay. The world flickered through a film reel at half speed.

Steam and magic flooded from Arata’s nostrils as control returned and thoughts of bludgeoning Kira fled. Tears were forming in those soft, pretty eyes, but comfort was a luxury he could not offer her.

Who could say what emotion those tears spoke of? Indignancy? Confusion? Despair? Certainly not him, and he did not intend to find out with the end so near.

To falter would mean failure.

Arata clasped his hands again as he visualized the point of return given to him by crystal. The coordinates in the flow of time they would lift out of and be thrown to. Indigo light suffused the crystal in response to his will. There was no stopping it now.

“I did what was best for you, Kira!” Arata yelled over the rising hum of tempestuous magic. “I did it for you, and for me! All our pain, all our suffering until this moment, I did it all because –”