antigone.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuka's hands dropped into his world, reaching to him from reality's estranged plane. Seemingly oblivious to his death-state, she looked unreal to him from where he lay; yet her hands, waiting for his, coaxed him to believe her to be real. He took a moment to exhale slow, testing whether it was to be his last. But when his shallow breaths continued, something fell quiet within him, his panic slipping through the cracks which began to splinter across his sense of self. The storm smoothed into the greys of hallway surrounding him, the rain stopping to pool as rot in the bottom of his soul.

With a pained grunt of effort, Cross lifted himself to a sit, extended both hands towards Yuuka's, and with dull surprise saw his own hand hanging limply off his wrist. He felt nothing of his injury, the pain displaced through his broken bones and into his skull as a dull ringing struck against the floor, and so he extended his left arm for her to grab instead. His right hand grasping hers, he heaved himself to his feet.

A blood-rush dizzied his brain, that momentary vertigo smearing his consciousness between his realities. Dull aches like deep bruises condensed in his lung and liver, but when he looked down at his chest, he saw no holes in his robes, and when he pressed his hand over those spaces, he felt no injuries perforating his flesh. Adrift in this uncertain feeling of where in time he stood, Yuuka's voice reached him as if from a muffled distance, her words then sharpening with clarity once she floated the idea of using the paneling on the wall as a shield. His attention snapped back to her, his right hand falling heavily to his side and his expression deadening to nothing--to fear replaced with an absence of feeling.

「No.」 The word dropped between them as a callous weight, and before she could respond, Cross turned his back to her, retreading his steps to pick up the scalpel from where he had dropped it on the ground. Once he stashed it back in his waist sash, he turned his head to look at her again, his back straight and his arms held behind his back--a detached and diplomatic posture. 「We're going the other way.」

She watched Cross drift away, his arms secured behind his back. The thickly swollen and purple-brushed hand made her stomach churn. She knew he suffered an injury in his rescue, but she dismissed it. Yuuka wondered if she had always been apathetic in situations like this. She drew her arm across her chest and snugged it close.

She abandoned Maru when they first met.

She was going to let her brother die when he was kidnapped.

She wanted to hurt her brother after his release.

Yuuka stole a peek at her reflection in the polished chrome. Every echo of her returned her stare; several pairs of eyes were sharpened with shame. She turned her gaze down and followed Cross. She reflected on how she became so cruel. It wasn't just her brother's inactions when they were kids. It was the whole system of sorcery. Death accompanied every mission, and any injury, wasn't something to linger on. She wondered if she wanted to continue living like that.

She looked back at her reflection. She made a silent promise to herself that her past-self was dead and her future-self had yet to be born, but she could control how she was in the present moment. She closed her eyes and pondered briefly on the idea of apologizing. The two words dripped like acid on her tongue. Either interpretation, sorry for saving me, and sorry I hurt you, were both misaligned to how she was feeling. She determined that her actions alone would convey her resolve.

The rooms they passed contained nothing but ghosts of stories similar to theirs. Empty cells, scattered objects, and dim warning lights marked the spaces abandoned, and despite his attempts to thoroughly scan the areas for information or useful tools, a low humming in the stale, cold air pressed an uncomfortable static denser into his ears the longer he explored. Something in it warned him to flee elsewhere; the droning unnerved him, amplified by an uncertainty if the sound was truly real or a product of his mind accumulating detritus shed from the rhythmic blaring of the emergency signal.

Pushed out of the room by that ambient sense of danger, he glanced toward Yuuka to find her proceeding down the hall toward a bend in the corridor, and with her at an acceptable distance away from him, he pushed the scalpel out of his sash and raised it to mark the area as checked. Then, in his mind's eye, his movements slowed to a crawl through time.

Ch-chck, and the guns loaded their bullets.

One fiber at a time, he felt his muscles unwind around the scalpel, his grip falling limp and the tool descending to the ground as the mechanical noises clicking around the corridor's corner set a black, unknown crevice in his brain aflame. In the fractal span of a second, Cross' eyes widened to the ghost-sensation of rain hitting his face, of his limbs falling heavily to his sides, of blood internally bursting from his veins and soaking his insides in its own gore -- of two bullets drilling through his arteries and into his organs until they slowed to nest. His brain seized in confusion beneath a wave of indescribable phantom-pains he could never unknow, his vision blurring between the rainy Makyo's ruins and the metallic hallway he stood in. They had told the gun to "wait", so it did. One wrong word, and with two shots they claimed his life. Nothing had been "stopped", so his world ended.

A world too soon to end now waited for Yuuka, too.

The scalpel clattered against the ground.

「Stop!」

A familiar glacial sunlight stretched from its origin, ten years ago, across an undefined realm to reach her. The chilled sunlight captured her in its unconvincing warmth. With a gentle tug, the memory pulled her into its present time and space. Yuuka, with all the cognitive awareness of her present self, possessed her adolescent counterpart, and she peered through her former self's eyes. The welcoming feeling of a lost home filled her with an unwanted nostalgia. A young Tsurugi sat by her side, aware and uninterested in her presence in the face of the television; she briefly watched him, wondering if he knew that she was quite not herself. When he made no notion of recognizing the supernatural of this world, she followed his gaze to the television. The brilliant bokeh swirled in imperceptible movements upon the pixelated screen, and she vaguely knew without knowing the scene behind the dancing lights. A cookie-cutter hero barreled his way through the sheets of bullets; somehow, dodging the vast array of metal as if he phased through water. And the machine's whirling voices grew more thunderous as she watched.

Gradually, the Yuuka trapped in a chrome maze, realized that this sound held vague familiarities of her childhood. Something she knew so distantly that she had forgotten its existence, but instinctively knew this memory would not abandon her, it was attached to her, like how her body was shaped in the womb, chaotically meticulous. She was marked by this sound, and thus the sound became her. That is why she continued her approach.

She reached the beginning of the T-shaped intersection, unwittingly seeking to spy a reflection of herself she organically forgot. An erratic weight applied pressure against her, and her vision violently rotated. A red burst of light blinded her periphery as metal exploded in her ears. Her body and mind were thrown back into reality with Cross's momentum, and she crashed into him. Her body recoiled to the endless cacophony. Her body jerked primitively, shielding her face and curling her knees into her chest to protect her vitals. She didn't count how many times she rolled or flinched, but considering the slaughtering noise, it must have been close to four-hundred times in mere ten seconds.

A dreadful ring absorbed all sound as the light dimmed, and a hazy, acidic smoke diluted the hallway. The smoke's curling tendrils flickered with last life before dissolving from view. Yuuka unwound her body and carefully rolled from Cross's arms; she dropped to the floor after an unrealistically long fall, and she felt her muscles ache and twitch from acid bleeding from every fiber. She forced her body to move, pushing her weight to her knees, and she looked at Cross. The ringing weened, and a painful muffle followed.

She touched Cross's shoulders, first gently, and then patted instinctively, recreating a pattern she learned somewhere, long ago. When Cross twisted his face, her muscles relaxed enough to feel the brief reprieve. Her face wore an apologetic gratitude, holding it until Cross bore witness to her silent show of thanks, and then, she moved. Her body screamed to stay put and let the fear seep from her bones, but she rejected her body and absorbed the unusual zen that trailed behind near-death experiences. Her open hands hung low for Cross to take. When his calloused hands took hers, and she heaved him up. She focused briefly on the scarred blisters, finding it ironic that the regal air Cross emitted starkly opposed the laborious years of his childhood. She let the grip fall, her hands loosely falling to her sides, and she turned to the wall riddled with hundreds of impact holes, all of which smoked the fading wisps.

Yuuka released a quiet sigh through her nose and loosely shifted her weight to pop a hip out to rest her wrists into her sides. Overcome with annoyance at the inconvenience of nearly dying, she looked to Cross after her quick inspection of the scene and shrugged.

So was he.

Patience steady upon his face, he waited for her to collect her courage, but to the question she dared to ask, he only answered with a slow shake of his head. In place of the material knowledge she requested, he heaved himself to his feet, closed his eyes, and placed a finger atop the lid of his forehead, attuning his soul to Harmony's magnetic field. He felt out the energies distorting that fabric, he listened for the electromagnetic hum of his and his brother's twinned gravities holding their orbits in check with one another, and, nearby, he felt his existence come into balance with Maru's. Cross opened his eyes, his blown-out pupils, stretched dark with unseeing, tightening against the lights of the physical plane, and he dropped his gaze back down to Yuuka, his expression abruptly hollowed out, vacant and owlish.

「Maru's here,」 was all he offered before he returned his attention to the room. His cloth-bound footfalls light and soundless against the metallic floor, he tread carefully around the area, approaching nearby cells and surfaces to inspect for clues. The other cages retained no evidence of their occupants, and he passed the open spaces by with only cursory glances. But closer toward the doorless entrance stood what looked to be an unused operating table, something he recognized to be common on Earth, with various instruments scattered upon it. Scalpels, needles, and other small tools foreign to him were strewn about as if abandoned in a hurry, and he carefully combed his thoughts through the objects before deciding to pick up a scalpel. Knowing that they ought to leave the room and venture out into the sterile, unfamiliar halls, he determined it useful to know where they have and have not been; and so, approaching the entryway, he scraped an X into the wall with the blade.

Tucking the instrument into a fold of his waist sash, Cross peered out of the room and through the pulsating reds lighting the connecting hallway. He saw nothing, no-one, though Maru's near presence informed him that the emptiness attempted to deceive. After scrutinizing the hall as far as his vision allowed, he glanced back to Yuuka again, wordlessly requesting her attention before pointing his eyes down toward the right end of the corridor.

「He's this way,」 Cross explained in a hush. Even whispered words crowded to echoes between the soulless walls.

The words, Maru is here, accompanied his silently roaring despair, and his sorrow slammed against Yuuka like a tidal wave breaking against a barrier; his heartache saturated her soul in a relentless, familiar cold. She shivered. Her heart wrenched as she recognized the intimate grief shared by Cross. For a moment, she took pause, mourning the absence affection between siblings, and lowered her gaze in her silent contemplation. After a moment, she raised her gaze, and her empathy stretched across the space between them. Her invisible arms sought to wrap around him, in a very similar manner to his invisible hand had caressed her shoulder in comfort as she routinely consumed her cluster of pills to fend off the monstrous symptoms. Before she could grasp him in a cradle of empathy, he turned away, leaving the room altogether. Forlorn, she sat in the middle of the cell, clutching weakly on his mantle. She refused to fill his empty spaces with false assumptions conjured from her singular perspective and stood with some effort. Her legs wobbled like a newborn fawn, and her brain began to pulse. The incessant red lights clawed into her eyes, festering her already weak mind. Suddenly, the all too familiar ice pick struck her brain with a quick tap. She closed her eyes, brows furrowed in the smallest motion, and she breathed through the pain. Then, she trekked his steps, mantle hung over her arm.

She met him as he carved an X into the reflective wall. The tearing of chrome against steel drove the pick deeper into her skull. Nausea bubbled in her gut. Again, she carefully breathed, fending off the discomfort with seasoned ease. She approached him, watching his hand closely, and the intent rose within her to prevent his action if he decided to repeat his marking. Thankfully, he stored the surgical tool.

He had seamlessly transitioned into a survival state. She had been impressed by his adaptive ability, but vaguely understood that his years struggling to even exist had awarded him these skills. She neither wanted to congratulate him nor fawn over these unbidden skills, and instead, she followed his lead with firm faith that he would guide them to safety.

Once she had returned his mantle to him, a gratitude staining her eyes, she traced his footfalls with care. The emptiness of the chrome prison pricked her skin with millions of bumps. She felt her hair follicles sting with every brush against the fabric of her clothes. She wasn't sure if she wanted to pass another soul, unaware of what lurked beyond their vision. Yet, she wanted to see at least one soul, her brother's. As Tsurugi crossed her mind, her heart sank into the sea of nausea. She shook off the grief and convinced herself of his capability to survive on his own. Despite that, she instinctively pressed her temple to reach him. Her gentle touch offered no response, and she disguised her movements by tucking a stray lock behind her ear.

Time's relevancy faded into obscurity as they wandered aimlessly through the desolate, bitter halls. If it were not for Cross's tactic to mark passages they have passed, they could have easily completed a whole circuit. Each wall appeared the same as the last. The sectioned sheets of metal flooring were measured 24 by 24 feet and were equally placed with no unevenly measured pieces to fill in the empty gaps. The structure was far too precise to have been constructed by human hands, and that thought alone resurfaced a wave of nausea.

Cross woke with a start.

Residual terror thrummed in his chest as his wide eyes flickered wildly over his environment, his mind struggling to peel his nightmare off of his reality. In the pulsating red lights and droning of the sirens he sensed the the slow demise he knew to be coming for him and considered performing his own death rite to save his soul -- yet as he feverishly reviewed the funerary rituals, he imagined the communal effort of carrying Dura's coffin, wondered desperately how he could bear dying without anyone to watch over him, and, slowly, his breath deepened to the hushed heaves of a body wrung of its faith.

Through heavy layers of tired aches Cross lifted himself from where he had dreamt upon the ground and lurched to his feet. Only vaguely aware of his own movement, he took careful steps out of the open door to the prison he had been placed in, his eyes blearily scanning the room before something familiar parted his haze--within a nearby cell, Yuuka had made herself small upon the metal floor.

Clarity scattering the dull film from his eyes, Cross hurried into her open cage and crouched before her, inspecting her body for injuries. Through the emergency lights' dim reds, he could see her thin frame quivering from either cold or fear. Unsure what plagued her, he shrugged off the mantle draped over his robes and gently placed it on her before glancing back at the room behind them.

With his lucidity returning, he observed the area properly for the first time, finding it to be crowded with open cages all deserted of occupants. He felt a dense danger in that emptiness, as if the shadows seethed with threats that others were wise enough to flee from -- but far heavier was the gut-dread that his lifeless state could have not only been his own undoing, but Yuuka's.

She slept peacefully despite the cold. She was lost on the darkest of seas, lifting up with gentle crests and tilting down into the cradled troughs. The placid, vacant sea lulled her, gave her a peace she could only presume to be the tender death in which her grandparents often spoke out of turn to a naive child who only knew death as the notorious thief of all souls. In her sunless mind, she hoped this was death, and death had kindly greeted her amidst the desolate oceans to take her to the edge of the world, where she would fall off, disappear, and never return.

A familiar warmth tugged at her mind. The sun seemed to rise in her dark expanse. From the mirage of the never ending world, the sun paralleled the black sea, casting its powerful rays along its clandestine surface, revealing the orange-tinted teal and underneath it, objects, memories from her life. She realized, this was not death, but sleep, a sleep so deep and far that she was no longer a part of this universe. She knew she had to return, to go back to the chaotic, challenging, and crooked world. She was neither happy nor sad to be alive. It was her truth, she persisted, and she felt too vain, too proud to resist life's provocation.

Her body reacted to the mantle's warmth, and she grasped it, pulling it closer to retain the heat that continuously escaped. She settled again, closer again now to the emptiness of a dark universe that she once yearned. Though the tender hand and light tremble steered her course towards the hot sun. Yuuka sighed, and she opened her eyes.

The blurry image of the spiky green hair and three crimson eyes conjured the word friend. She blinked through her sleep, ridding the viscous film that prevented her focus. When she finally came to, she saw Cross without his mantle, and with impossible haste, connected the dots. She pushed herself upright, letting the mantle draped from her grip. Yuuka wondered if he had noticed she had clung to it like a newborn baby. She refused to accept it herself, and allowed the mantle to remain on her lap, unable to touch it again.

"Cross?" She looked around, observing the sleek, cold chrome that kept her entombed in wishful fantasies.

"Cross?" her tone firmer now, taut like a rubber band ready to snap. She bore her ocean colored eyes into his. Her silent concerns raged within the chrome cell as she knew instinctively they were not in the Naunax. The Rumelians' temporary home had not been sited anywhere within the city; it's steel spire would have been immediately spotted, and its imposing presence would very well stir fear of an actual alien invasion.

Defeated by logic, her shoulders went limp. All the conversations she had with long-term residents were unfortunately correct. She stared at Cross's fingertips splayed out on the chrome floor. Exhaustion hit her all at once, and she closed her eyes. She nearly submitted to the heavy weight of her emotions bearing down upon her, but she knew Cross was at her side, and she trusted him, perhaps more than anyone else in this world or their world. She slowly opened her eyes, steeled by her faith in the Rumelian, and returned her gaze to him.

If he doesn't think about it, he could have ignored the way his voice wavered a little when he spoke up. Why couldn't they try and change things here? It wasn't like home. There wasn't anything hanging over their heads like it was back there. She wanted to go back because she didn't know the things he did.

The duel, the state of the world and their friends. . .it was a weight he bore on his shoulders because she didn't know yet. If they stayed here, she probably won't ever know unless he tells her.

Well, if she could keep her secrets, he'll keep his.

"If we get back. We don't even know if we're going to be able to go back. Maybe we get back and this is all a bad dream and this conversation never happened. Don't you - ugh."

She reminded him of their grandfather. In all the years the two had been raised by their grandparents, Tsurugi could only remember mention of a single time they had fought - Grandma had said it was because their grandfather was stubborn to a fault when he thought he was right about an idea. It had caused conflict for them for their entire lives, even if they had eventually learned to live with it.

Tsurugi lifted his hands, rubbing his palms against his eyes. She had a reason to think she couldn't trust him with all this information, but it still hurt to think about.

"That isn't how this all works, you know. Just because you're gone doesn't mean I stop being your older brother. I just become an older brother who can't talk about his sister anymore."

There was a bit of misery in his voice that he couldn't fight off, stuck in the back of his throat like a fishbone. If Yuuka really didn't want to change anything, then fine. He'd continue on the way they were. But...

'So you're just-- giving up?'

Yuuka scoffed and looked away, disappointed, disgusted, and done with her brother. He never tried to understand her. No, he always chose not to understand. He rejected how the world functioned for something that made him feel better. She could not condemn him, she had done the same. For years, she rejected her brother because he did not defend her right to the ring. He wore it, and trained endlessly to prove he did not need it.

She sighed. Yes, they were small children to their mother. They were powerless and unimportant before her, before the Gojo Clan. They were the pieces of evidence to prove their clan lost their position, lost their strength, lost everything that made the clan immense.

He continued to talk, processing through his misplaced words. He attempted to appeal to her emotions. It didn't work. She preferred this conversation never happened in the first place. He already rejected her perspective. He wanted to take charge, have some power in her situation, believe that he could will, wish, guilt, plead, beg, the lump of cells shortening her continuous life. He had no control. She had no control. She didn't want control. Her life was finalized, and that is exactly how she wanted it to be.

And he rejected it.

"I suppose you finally got what you want then, Tsuguri," Yuuka finally spoke, not a hint of malice or spite, merely a matter-of-fact tone. Yuuka forced a sigh, relinquishing herself to the only truth that he spoke, the only truth that mattered. They were family, and she could not cut him out of her life. Yet, her frustration boiled because of him.

"If I do, I'll keep it safe, just as grandpa would have wanted." She pushed her hair out of her face, and she looked at him distantly. Her stomach churned just thinking about how her own family refused to understand her, and she pictured Cross's fierce anger. His indignation unchecked at her situation, at his situation, and his need to empathize with her in some way and shared in her pain. She inwardly smiled.

"Man, I am BEAT."

That was a lot of stuff having to be moved around. "Bah, thanks for helping me out with cleaning my room!" Hanabi laughs as she enters her room with some drinks and snacks.

Although she colored her merry explanations of the foods with embellishments to gloss over the holes in her knowledge, Cross accepted the information given to him as-is, holding the more reliable details in his mind while quietly brushing away the exaggerated comment about cavemen. But despite her apparent lack of uniform know-how, he took humble enjoyment from learning what he could by word of mouth, as he understood these opportunities to peacefully converse to be transient in nature.

Snapping a pair of wooden chopsticks apart, he methodically placed his hand around the utensils to pick up the gyoza and try it. As she mentioned, the shell met his teeth with a slight crunch that otherwise coated the soft, spongy encasing, and the fillings which spilled out complimented the mild flour-taste. He nodded, affirming its quality.

「Food has as much to do with a nation's geographical proximity to other cultures as it does with the local ingredients,」 he acknowledged in response to her explanations, speaking up only once he finished chewing. 「When our trade routes were open, our food became richer. The spices we imported came with knowledge on how they're used. And at times, traders from our distant neighbor, Shaama, would bring whole recipes with them. I didn't give it any thought it back then, but I understand what it meant now.」 A melancholic smile lifted his lips as he recalled Rumel's golden days. Having only been a boy at the time, he didn't yet know how to cherish peace, leaving him now to hold onto the pieces he happened to remember.

As she sat with him inside the muggy cart, he shared in one breath his people's history and culture with immense respect. She could not help but be hypnotized by his affection. He loved his people, his culture, so much so that he would risk everything to ensure their continuous existence. She understood her culture to be of a similar mind to an extent. The initial resistance of the sorcerers, even from her, spoke to the possibilities of rejecting outsiders based on preconceptions.

It wasn't until she lost everything that she truly empathized with his and Maru's struggles.

"You'd be a good narrator for documentaries," she pointed at him enthusiastically, as if she finally found the perfect job that he wasn't searching for, "like Damon Battanhouse." She took a timid bite out of her gyoza, still pondering her realization.

"If you wrote a book on Rumelian history, I would read it," she pensively continued, "and I mean that, I'm not much of a reader, but I find the Rumel's history to be fascinating. It feels so natural and surreal at the same time, y'know? As if I heard it from somewhere before a long time ago, and yet it's entirely new."

He couldn't pinpoint when the gulf started to form between them. Probably in the months between the passing of their grandparents and the hand-off of that ring. Their paths had diverged in a way that felt irreparable from the moment it had been taken from her hands and put into his.

She fought to be strong enough to earn it back - and in his heart, without some miracle, he knew she never would. He fought to become strong enough to abandon it, but there was still some part of him missing that would keep him from crossing that final finish line.

"No, I didn't learn it from Usami, he-" He's not been around since his own technique tore him to shreds. "I haven't spoken to him about any of this. Yuuka, just listen-"

They stopped being this a long time ago, as if she would ever stop being his younger sister. He heaved a sigh, hands coming up to rub against his face.

"Fine! Fine, I'm not here to give you - whatever you think I am, not pity or remorse or anything like that. What are we going to do then, huh?"

He gestured between them, the same as she had. Her face went pale and he curled his fingers into his palm, nails biting into the skin there.

Neither was deemed worthy enough to live without the ring, until she was deemed better in her mother's eyes, and Tsurugi the weakling. She knew how much that idea diminished his identity, and it helped him to grow physically and mentally. Although the ring wasn't a status of weakness to her as it was for Tsurugi. The ring represented the last gift of the father who stayed.

"We do nothing, Tsurugi," she admitted calmly as if this was the last words she whispered to herself every night before bed. "There's nothing to do. I kept this from you because I knew this would change your mind about me." She nearly confessed that she confided in Cross because he understood the sensitive nature of her illness, but she knew it would hurt Tsurugi.

Yes, hurting him was her last intent. She wanted his pain to appear and fade away quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. Her goal was to leave this world and let him live his life while she became a picture on his shelf and a faded idea in his mind. "Our lives were miserable after grandma and grandpa died, Tsurugi. We tried to fill in their shoes, prove to ourselves and to our parents that we were made of something more than they ever hoped for us. It turned us against each other."

Yuuka paused.

"And I don't want my horrible roll in life to change that. I don't want things to change, Tsurugi. I want to leave this world as we made it, and not pretend we actually liked each other after everything went wrong. I would rather have a screwed-up relationship with my brother than a fake one at the end."

Somehow, she knew Cross would understand her sentiment. His relationship with Maru soured over the years due to bad lots in life. Neither Cross nor Yuuka wanted to fake a loving sibling relationship unless it was earned, and to Yuuka, her brother had more growing to do before she could meet him face to face in a new breath.

It wasn't hard for him to piece together what she was talking about though. Cross was here and must have been alright physically - so he probably hadn't yet experienced the failed peace discussions. Yuuka had kept her health a secret from him, but even if he didn't know the exact specifics of what was wrong with her, it was hard to miss the fatigue, the hesitance in her movements...

She wasn't that sick yet. So they weren't from the same point in time, huh.

"No one told me, idiot. I'm just not blind."

"You were blind for weeks," she maliciously testified, "now, who's the idiot?" Her fists tightened until her sharp nails sent painful shockwaves to her dying brain. "So, you learned by 'providence', and definitely not from Usami," venom dripped from her mocking tone, "and you," she couldn't register abstractness of his gentle touch, the word 'hug' was lost upon her and it angered her. "Argh!" She slammed her fists against the empty air, frustration flowing through the energy she wrought, "What's with you?! You don't get girls at all, especially not me! I don't need--" she waved the air between them, "this! We stopped being this a long time ago," she emphasized the dilapidated closeness. "And since you know, get one thing straight: I don't want anything from you. I don't want your apologies, I don't want your remorse-- I don't need it. We made each other miserable for a reason, and don't pretend we didn't do that." The exhertion taxed her soul, depleting the limited resources she had left.

Exhausted in her defeat, she sighed, and dropped her head. Death refused to leave her, sprawling himself across her feet. Her head throbbed, and her skin whitened. In the quietness, she remembered how small her hand felt in his strong grip all those years ago. She had forgotten what it was like to be vulnerable with him. Now, the thought of it made her sick. She desperately missed him, and at the same time, she hated his guts. She wanted to keep him by her side forever, take him with her as she died, but at the same time, abandon him and keep the memory of him as he was: a terrible, older brother who at times showed up as a hero.

Not that Lich had any experience with that at all. But some of those people that did enter here had an ego she hadn't seen in quite some time. Which was both impressive and incredibly annoying given how many of those individuals Lich didn't want to interact with...

"A rat with a power complex," she pictured her brother and snickered, waiting to lay that new nickname on him and watch him react. "So, participating in the weird situations benefits us in the end; it's archaic, but effective manipulation." Yuuka pondered the role of manipulation across human history, and the concept of the colosseum passed her mind. She then remembered Cross's departed friend, Dura, who was put into a position akin to a gladiator. Except he managed to overcome the manipulators through purest liberation: death. A dour expression painted her face as she paid silent tribute to the man she never knew.

Wouldn't that be nice?

The teen laughs, and Hanabi chews on the insides of her cheek. She wants to join. If only it were funny. If only she were kidding.

"I'm sorry," She apologizes instead.

Now what, indeed...

Yuuka ruffled her hair in exasperation and sighed. She had no recourse, no other other than to wait it out. She should be accustomed to this sense immovability, and yet, her soul felt constricted by her inability to control her future.

"The driver mentioned something," she spoke between tightened lips and rummaged for her device. The clunky block remained uncomfortable in her palm and she open her profile. Her name, her age, her housing were underneath her contact. She pursed her lips.

I don't want to go there.

Tsurugi wouldn't be there, neither would her mother. She found it strange how much she wanted their attention and their love. They were the two whom constantly restricted both. "Hey, if it's not too much to ask of you.... do you mind if we hung out a bit more?"

Ah, and now being here, there was no way for him to do even that. There was the briefest flash of something sad in his expression before Yuuka continued talking and he pulled himself back together.

"Special grade! Well, that does help out - I think." They shared the same thought: since we're stuck here. It had been his goal to learn as much as he could, since Gojo had brushed it off onto him as something to focus on, and that was the thing that stuck out still.

Grandpa, I caught a toad!

Yuuka smiled wider, tears now traced her eyes. She had investigated every nook of his property, exploring the areas where he claimed once he had that home under his name. She swallowed her melancholy and nodded her head.

Yuuka finally responded with a confident nod. "I'll be your support, Okkotsu-senpai; you can count on me!" She rose her fist chest height, waiting for the returned fist bump. "Whatever we find out, we share immediately. You can call me day or night, and I'll be there, no matter what."