Archive of Our Own ^beta

Apparent Radiant

"Tell me what you see."

Kosmos Zoldyck looks through his binoculars, his mouth a thin line. The top of his head barely crests the stucco railing he stands behind. Beside him, his older brother Silva asks the question again.

"Tell me what you see," he says, adding, "focus simultaneously with your eyes and your Nen."

"I don't see the target. He was right there, and then he vanished." His voice is high and petulant, and he rises up to his tiptoes to get an even better perspective. Standing to his right, Silva is much taller, and folds lean arms across his chest as he extends his En and locates the bright flashes of aura of the two butlers stationed some distance away, on the rooftops of neighboring buildings. Aster is even further away, so far he cannot sense her, and Tsubone with her, and when he lectures his younger brother Silva cannot help the feeling that he is saying what they would have had they been here in his place.

"We know his ability. He can control the senses of those he attacks, by touching the respective part of someone's body—any contact with the eyes can change what a person sees, any contact with the ears can make someone hear sounds that aren't real." Silva rolls one shoulder back, recalling the last time they had engaged their target. "He can only control one sense at a time, per person, and if he changes to a new mark he'll lose his control on the old one."

It was how he had gotten away the last time, darkening Silva's vision and then running from them with unnatural speed, moving far enough away that even Aster with her scope and Tsubone with her vehicles could not follow. Kosmos's ability is better suited for close range, as is his own, and it is why their father has insisted that they all go together to fulfill this contract, with a passel of bodyguards as support. It's an expensive contract, according to Aster, and Silva is fine to let her manage things as she sees fit. He will follow the family's orders, even if his older sibling continues to ask him to do little more than watch after the younger.

"So we need to hit him with everything we have all at once," Kosmos says, as if it's that easy or simple. "We've never tried engaging him with more than two or three. We almost had him last time."

"We also don't know how long he can hold a person's senses," Silva reminds him, patiently. "We don't know if it's broken by distance or time or some other factor. There might be something we're missing. Some detail we've overlooked."

Kosmos merely clucks his tongue and shifts on his feet. "Waiting so long is boring. We should just go to him, you know?"

Silva glances down at Kosmos, now using the edge of his binoculars to scratch under his chin. He far preferred working alone, and like Kosmos he would have chosen a path where he could just step forward and use the strength of his arms to end any threat or opposition. He does not like to think so deeply about strategy or plans, and feels he can know his opponent best simply by meeting them in battle—not by poring over Nen typing charts or analyzing every detail of their personality, like some of the butlers seem to think.

"We must wait. Aster wants to be the first to engage. If she can mark him with her scope, she can follow him anywhere. If we know where he is, he cannot escape. In order to close the net tighter, first we must build one."

"Yeah, yeah. I know." The binoculars are tossed from hand to hand. Kosmos grinds the edge of a sneaker against the bottom of the stucco. From behind, the round sun warms the many colors of the scuffed paint on the rooftops surrounding them. The air is warm and sluggish, and the waiting is making Silva lose what remains of his patience.

"Those are doing you no good like that. Give them to me if you're not going to use them."

"You should have brought your own, then." He makes a show of loosening and tightening the cord that binds them to his wrist. "I came prepared!"

"Kosmos." Silva reaches for them, and Kosmos jerks them away, before his mouth turns up in a crooked smile and he holds them up to his eyes facing Silva.

"I can see every pore in your nose," he intones, before sweeping the binoculars up and down. "And every speck of dust on your tunic. How long have you been wearing that?"

"Since yesterday." It feels like they've been traveling longer, waiting longer. His eyebrow twitches, and Kosmos snaps the binoculars up to capture the movement.

Much longer.

"Brother, I'm hungry. Did you bring anything to eat?"

"The butlers have the supplies."

"So that's a no, then." Mock disappointment is replaced quickly by a far-too-eager glint in the eye. "Hey, Silva, do you see that?"

"See what?" He scans the edge of the rooftops, squinting against the way the sun's brightness has slowly overtaken their surveillance position. Kosmos points over the railing towards the far right.

"There, see?" He points more fervently. Silva scowls. It's probably nothing. Kosmos isn't even using the damn binoculars.

His phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket and presses a button to accept the call. It's a Beatle, completely new technology, and using it still feels strange and unfamiliar. The tinny sound of his sister's voice comes through the speakers.

"We have a sighting! He's moving up the boulevard towards your location. Wait to engage on my signal."

"Both of us, or just me?" he asks, ducking his head back into the shade, against the wall of the rooftop's portico. They stand in the doorway of a rundown apartment building's fire escape, and in the last flares of the dying sunlight the view of the city could almost look elegant, all pastel colors and smooth edges. But then his vision clarifies, and he catches sight of Xanthos moving further down the street, traveling so quickly he is almost a blur.

"Just you, of course. Leave Kosmos in reserve. He should come in if any of us are incapacitated or he tries to escape in that direction. We're going to pincer him."

"Of course," he says. To Kosmos: "Stay here, stay focused, and above all else, stay safe. I will handle this."

Kosmos rolls his eyes, but presses his back to the wall, employing Zetsu and adopting a defensive stance. "Well handle it quickly, so we can eat!"

Silva leaps over the railing, keeping his back close to the wall as he drops five floors down to the street level, following the path of a crowded alley through to the main thoroughfare. This city, they know, keeps strange, strict hours—the restaurants and clubs facing the street will not open for hours, but it is not uncommon for people to party and take their leisure far into the night, as most work in surrounding cities or in the industrial sector far to the north. There are few people on the street, and what few brightly colored cars zip from one place to the next, to be gone a moment later. A good place for a safe house, as Silva had uncovered.

Two butlers follow Xanthos, gaining just enough visibility to force him right into Silva's path. Now, the true complexities of their plan would come into action. Silva, as the physically strongest among them, could not be targeted first. If he lost his sight, it would be that much easier for Xanthos to attack, and this time things could end more unfavorably than a few glancing scratches or another disappearance of a few days. The butlers were strong, but none could match the strength of himself or Aster, and his older sister preferred mid and long-range combat to close quarters. He wonders if a butler will be a strong enough deterrent to draw the target of Xanthos's most powerful ability.

When Xanthos realizes he's being followed he has only a second to dodge before one of the butlers, employing excellent Zetsu, crashes into the pavement at his back, swinging out with powerful punches.

"Not you people again!" He leaps back, stretching out his hand, and when he makes contact the butler staggers back, throwing an arm over their face and retching. Unsure which sense their target has stolen, taste or smell, Silva rushes forward anyway to keep Xanthos from fleeing, coming to a stop about twenty feet away. Xanthos turns sideways, keeping both Silva and the butler in his sights, and Silva tenses, waiting for the inevitable blow.

Xanthos stiffens, spotting a second butler following the path of the first, closing the distance between them quickly. With two at his back and only Silva blocking the path forward, Xanthos charges him, his En flaring as he lashes out with a series of attacks, his palms flat out and fingers curled.

He knows their goal is to capture him, so they cannot strike too forcefully, and for a few moments they trade strikes and dodges; even a glancing blow will be enough to trigger Xanthos's ability, and when Silva spots a glint from Aster's arrival over another rooftop a few blocks away he allows himself to be hit, absorbing a punch to the side of his head, reaching out and wrapping both arms around Xanthos's arm to trap it against his body.

The sensation of wind rushing through his ears is the only warning he gets before a sound like the horn of a train blasts loudly inside his head. His first instinct is to drop to the ground, every instinct telling him with surety that the sound is coming from right behind him, that he is about to get hit with something he won't be able to walk away from.

It is only his impressive training and his foreknowledge of the enemy's ability that keeps him from letting Xanthos go to clap his hands over his ears and leap to the side. Instead, he holds on tighter, but cannot help channeling as much of his Nen as possible into shielding his back as the sound seems to get that much louder.

Xanthos takes full advantage of the distraction, and with his front unshielded begins a savage string of attacks against anything and everything he can reach. Silva angles himself better against the wall at his back, trying to give any of the others the opening they need. One of their best and longest-serving butlers, long ponytail swinging, rushes in with determination, and Xanthos employs the same strategy Silva himself used, allowing himself to be hit. The butler staggers back, her arms lashing out in all directions, her eyes darting around but not focusing on anything.

"Tsubone!" Silva calls out to her.

"I can't see!" she shouts. "It's all dark!"

At this proclamation, a series of bullets lodge themselves into the wall in an arc around Silva's head, and he immediately hoists Xanthos into the air as high as he can. A second volley gets even closer, but Xanthos twists in place, trying to use as much of Silva's body as cover as possible. Silva was very aware that one of Aster's regular bullets would more than puncture through both of their bodies if it hit. The special bullets all had different effects, and it would be disastrous if one was wasted on him instead of on their target, due to their close proximity.

But he trusted his sister's aim. They had practiced this very gambit with the help of many of their butlers, for years, in their youth. Aster could hit the eye of a needle from a football field away. Her ability materialized a multifunctional, ever-changing weapon that she could adjust and change as her needs evolved, that used conjured bullets with a variety of effects. Some had explosive, fiery properties, some were corkscrew-shaped piercing rounds that could pass through all but the strongest Enhancement shield. She had been developing a new extension of the ability, a tracking bullet, that would link the signatures of anyone she hit with it, allowing her to track their location and movements for a limited time after impact. She'd been unable to make contact—the different bullets all had different speeds, and although her aim was almost always true, sometimes her opponents had suitable counters in their own strengths and abilities.

But it would be impossible to use if Xanthos took her sight, and so they had decided she would stay out of the battlefield until Xanthos had used that segment of his ability.

And now he had.

On a building two blocks over, Aster Zoldyck lay on the rooftop, a gigantic sniper rifle balanced over one shoulder, her eyes fixed to the scope. Nen flows through her body, into the weapon, and a smile stretches the corners of an otherwise inflexible expression. Her wide face, square jaw, and upswept white-blond hair make for an uncanny resemblance to her younger brother by four years.

The scope begins to twist, the parts rearranging themselves with the application of her Nen to grow and widen. Now the viewfinder is larger, the lenses magnified, and when Aster looks inside it she can see the field below her as clearly as if she was standing there herself.

Through the lens, she watches the process of the battle below. Silva maintains his hold on Xanthos, although he is slipping the more Xanthos's control over him—on his ears, she thinks—holds. Another swerve of the scope spots Kosmos, on the rooftop where Silva had left him, fists clenched, watching the others. Tsubone is in mild danger, but two other butlers are close behind her; it will take only a moment for them to catch up, and then the tide will turn. She has only to catch their target once, and the fight will be as good as won.

She reloads.

Xanthos strikes out with his free arm, slamming an open palm against the side of Silva's head. This, combined with the ringing in his ears, is enough to cause him to drop his hold. Xanthos follows it up with a kick to his ribs and runs, past them all, in the opposite direction of the approaching butlers.

"He's getting away!" Silva gets out, his teeth gritting against the imagined pain of the noise and the very real pain shooting up his body from his ribs. He heaves another breath before he staggers after him on surprisingly wobbly legs. He crosses another block, the strength in his legs compensating for the unsteadiness in his mind, but he comes to a sudden halt at the curb, his legs now shaking for an entirely different reason.

Kosmos stands at the other end of the sidewalk, Xanthos stopped inbetween them, standing in the middle of the street, his back to Silva. Before Silva can move, Xanthos charges, swiping out with the same martial arts movements he'd shown in their fight so far. As Kosmos dodges easily, the skill in his heritage is never more apparent, but with Xanthos pushing forward, for every inch Silva gains, Kosmos is pushed back just as far.

"Kosmos!" Silva shouts, making a sweeping motion with one arm. "Get out of the way! Let us handle this!"

Xanthos stills, and makes a quick glance at Silva over one shoulder. His expression is one of cold amusement. He turns back, and Kosmos has brought both hands together, his fingers hooked into claws. Nen rushes out of his combined hands, the purple-tinged energy taking the shape of a snarling dragon.

"Dragon Claw!" he calls the name of his attack with pride, the shape of the dragon so similar to the power his father wields, to the power Silva himself has been training over the course of years to match. Kosmos's Dragon Claw is a pale substitute, but the Emission-based attack washes over Xanthos, and despite the man's impressive Ken Silva can easily see the slashes along his shoulders and torso where the claws have sank in.

Kosmos is breathing heavily, the exertion from using his ability plainly evident, but he wears a proud, tight smile. He catches sight of Silva and that smile widens. He brings his outstretched hands back and flashes a thumbs up instead.

A bullet impacts with a loud thwock into Xanthos's shoulder. His body pitches to the side, but it's not enough to bring him down; Silva can see a silver protrusion in the shape of the letter X sticking out of the back of his right shoulder. The tracking bullet, then. Aster has done it.

Xanthos stiffens, one hand moving up and across his shoulder to find the edge of the bullet. He plucks at it, but cannot pull it loose. His aura brushes against it, confirms it for a construct made of Nen, and he scowls and straightens his back.

There is a new haste in his movements. He is no longer careful or controlled, all composure and discipline gone as he rushes forward, hands reaching towards Kosmos with a growl lodged in his throat.

He puts all of his aura into his legs, springing around Kosmos; his eyes flit to Silva's, and that same cold expression condenses into grim determination.

Kosmos is a moment too slow to react. His head turns, preparing for a counterattack, but then Xanthos drives his Nen-encased fist straight through Kosmos's body.

Something in Silva's head twinges, the horn-like sound disappearing for a second before his balance suddenly skews so violently it is as if the floor has tilted nearly to the vertical. His inner ear, he thinks to himself, for the moment before his body pitches forward, his arm outstretched towards Kosmos.

Silva can hear nothing. Kosmos's mouth opens in a silent scream as Xanthos removes his hand, covered in blood—Kosmos's blood, his brother's blood—and runs.

Emotion wants to carry him across the street and farther still, after the distant back of his target, to enact a bitter, bloody revenge. Kosmos falls to the ground, slowly. The expression on his face is one of disbelief. And still Silva cannot move at all, for the way his body is so gripped by distortion.

A storm of rage and sorrow battles within him. He is not sure which will prevail, but then the hold over his hearing is released from Xanthos's distance and he finds himself falling to the pavement at Kosmos's side, checking his injury with a growing horror he had no wish to know or to name.

"Kosmos." It is all he can do to say his brother's name.

Blood stains the corners of his mouth. "Did we get him?" he asks.

"Aster did." At this, Kosmos tries to move, to sit up, as if he has not yet grasped how seriously he has paid for even that inch of progress. "It's fine. You rest now."

"Oh." He reaches out, and Silva grasps his hand with all the strength he has. Dark red creeps along the tattered edges of his purple t-shirt, his shiny black windbreaker. He breathes, and the color spreads. Silva's hands are so much larger than Kosmos's. Larger still than Xanthos's had been. He can measure them, easily. He had thought they would get to grow more than this.

A clatter on the ground beside them announces Aster's arrival. She drops the weapon to the pavement before curling into a seated position above Kosmos, drawing his head onto her folded legs.

The three butlers that had accompanied them keep a respectful distance, but Silva can just barely hear one talking into a phone, calling a local hospital, to ready for their arrival. He knows it will be not enough, and far too late. Tsubone's arms flex, her eyes wavering between her charges, as if deciding between a motorbike or a helicopter, and calculating the speeds and the distance. Coming to the same conclusion they all had.

Too late, and not enough.

"Did you see my Dragon Claw?" he says, choking out a smile with the words. "I've been practicing so hard. It's going to be a great technique."

His grip on Silva's hand grows weaker. "It could've...been even stronger than yours. I could've done it."

"I know," Aster says. "We know."

Silva brushes the bangs from Kosmos's forehead. They spring back into place almost immediately, and he does it again. "Rest. You've earned your rest."

He makes a half-hearted struggle at that. "Dad always says not to rest if there's a job to finish. We've got to finish..."

Silva looks up, to Aster, and they both share a look of horrified, anguished resignation. He wants to ask her, in that moment, what they should do. He wants to know what she had done, when their mother died. He cannot remember what it was like. He was too young, to know life any other way.

When he looks back down, Kosmos is still, his eyes unfocused, his breath gone.

Something stutters in his own heart, something hard and frigid, and when he looks back at Aster he can tell she is feeling it too.

"We should..." he starts, but cannot finish the sentence.

"Yes," she says. "We should."

Neither of them move. After another minute of silence and that gnawing bitterness in his chest, Tsubone steps forward.

"Young Masters," she begins tactfully, "arrangements have been made for our transportation. Master Zeno will need to be notified. We will all be recalled back to Kukuroo Mountain. The chase is over."

Silva's head snaps up, as though he has not contemplated an alternative where they walk away. "No," he says in disbelief. "We cannot just leave like this. Right?"

"What choice do we have? The right thing is to go home." Her voice breaks. "To take him home."

Aster stays on the ground, winding her arms around Kosmos's head. A shuddering breath leaves Silva.

"It is my fault," he says.

"Don't say that." Tsubone's crisp voice cuts through the fog in his mind, as strident and unyielding as he has always known her. "It was his decision to engage the enemy alone. His training should have taught him better." At the aghast expressions on Silva and Aster's faces, she continues, "This life is in his blood. This could just as easily happened to either of you."

Aster turns, then, to pick the scope up off the floor. The contraption twists and changes again, and when it solidifies into form she is holding a thick square monitor, with a single red dot, blinking, moving further away. Around it are topographical notations, and the picture continues to adjust in deference to a compass in one corner and a zoom function in the other.

"Father will..." Silva begins. He is not sure what he wants to say.

"Father will not be pleased," Aster finishes. She stands, and the other butlers rush forward to lift Kosmos between them.

The monitor is tucked under one arm. Together, they turn and walk away.

His typical light tunic is exchanged for one in a somber black. It is new, he can tell—the color has not been lightened or the material softened by consecutive washes. The sleeves are long, and the belt is stiff and tight. He fidgets in the clothes in the corridor outside the main house, unwilling to take the last few steps to enter the building. The funeral is to take place later that day, and when that happens it will be final. Unchanging. It does not feel real, yet, and he is grateful that he has had little to do with the proceedings himself, when the entire contingent of butlers has descended into a well-organized swarm of resolution to arrange things in time.

Aster has insisted on it, for reasons he does not understand. He has not asked her, still, about the last time they had all gathered like this. He had been older than Kosmos was now when their mother died, but he has no memories of that day, or the ones thereafter. He had been away, for training, as he had been for the two years prior, and was recalled so suddenly the memories seem like a blur. It was only that one day he had a mother, and the next he had a brother. Zeno had been quiet; to Silva's eyes it was like he had not mourned at all. And he had always favored Aster, and Silva after her, who resembled him so clearly.

Kosmos had looked like their mother, with his dark hair and soft face. But in his physique he took after Zeno—lean and slight, nothing like their tall, broad-shouldered mother. There was a portrait of her in the house. For some time, it was impossible for him to think that such a strong woman had died. And now, he was faced with the prospect of a future where one more family member was irrevocably gone. He did not know how to handle it but by standing still and unmoving in that courtyard, just an arms-breadth away from the door.

Inside the windows, he can see figures. Most of them are butlers below his attention, although he notices Tsubone, standing with her hands on the shoulders of a young woman with dark hair. He cannot see Aster, or his father. He has no desire to be the first of their family inside.

"Ah! There you are." A voice startles him, and he glances back over one shoulder to see his sister walking up the path towards him.

"I'm glad I found you in time," she continues. Unlike him, her mood is not flat or solemn. Instead, she sounds full of anticipation.

"I don't understand." He crosses his arms, distracted for a moment by a wrinkle along one sleeve. He frowns.

"Your Zetsu is flawless, brother," she says. He hadn't even been aware he'd been using it.

"They haven't noticed you at all. Either of us, really. That's good. With everyone busy, it will be easier for you to sneak out."

"...What?" He still feels sluggish and imperceptive. "What do you mean?"

Aster pulls something from behind her back. It is the modified weapon, the monitor with the blinking light, zoomed so far out he can see all of Padokia and the two continents below it. In the middle of the Yorubian continent, to the north of a round bay in what he believes to be a desert, the blinking light is still.

Silva looks at her, then back at the monitor.

"He hasn't moved in twenty-four hours," she says confidently. "I believe he has gone to ground here, and that it is your best chance to bringing him down. Not for the contract, but for the honor of our family."

"Why me?" he asks. "Why not you?"

"You don't want to be here," Aster says. "You don't want to mourn, and not in this way. And no one will let you go otherwise. But every person on this compound is here, inside, preparing for the funeral. I've left a vehicle on the side road by the East house. You can go. You can succeed."

"You've been planning this, all along." He knows the way her mind works, remembers the calculating look in her eyes as she watched Xanthos run. "You should be there with me."

"I'm trying to give you the satisfaction of revenge," she says. "Don't you want that?"

"The revenge should be yours, or Dad's." The words leave his mouth in a rush as he tries to tamp down the vicious anticipation that rushes through him like the shock of static electricity at the prospect of her plan. "You are the heir. It is your right."

"And I grant it to you. So get it. See our brother avenged."

He nods, once. "It will be done."

"You make it sound like it will be easy," she says, tapping the blinking dot with a wry smile. "Did you not recognize where our target is hiding?"

Geography has never been his strong suit. He always had people like Aster planning his missions and directing his movements. His strength was in his hands and his arms, he knew, not in his mind. "No. Where is he?"

"Ryuuseigai."

In that one word, he feels his stomach drop and clenches his teeth against the growing sense of disconcertion. It is a feeling he associates with their target's ability, and suddenly cannot stand it. Feeling like this, it is like he is back, on that street. Too late to act.

"The city of trash. What of it?"

"Be careful." She holds the monitor still so he can get one last look. "I can only hold onto his location for so long. But I believe he will not leave, not until he is healed and he believes himself safe."

She cannot know her advice is among the last words he had spoken to his younger brother. So he nods again, instead, as something new occurs to him. "Do you believe he is a resident of this place? Or is he merely using it to hide out, to escape us?"

"That is something you will have to discover for yourself." She offers him her hand, and he takes it in a firm handshake, before turning and making his way across the grass in the direction she has stated, finding an unmarked vehicle under the shade of a tall tree tucked behind the East House, with the keys in the ignition and the tank full of gas. A black duffle sits in the empty passenger seat, and Silva takes a moment to rifle through it, finding provisions, several bound stacks of hundred-jenni notes, a small box of stamped pieces of gold, and some of his old tactical clothing. He tugs at the stiff black fabric around his neck. He wonders what the rest of the family will think of his absence. Zeno will disapprove, as will Maha. And the butlers will follow in their lead, as always. How well that system has served them.

He scowls, and peels away from the house in disgust.

The airship leaving Jersei City is full of tall plastic troughs in shades of green or brown or black, the cargo hold stripped of all non-essential trappings to hold even more bins, each bolted to the walls and floors with thick rivets. One of the crewman had explained it to Silva when he'd approached with his offer—a few freshly-peeled jenni notes for their flight path, and when that matched both his suspicions and his wishes, an entire sheaf of notes to allow him access to the cargo hold and to forget they ever saw his face.

The airship—a garbage freighter, carrying Yorkshin's trash. The destination—a city on the other side of the continent, where it would repeat the process on the way back to pick up trash from one of the more populous areas on the opposite coast. And in the middle, the seam in the floor of the cargo hold would split, and each gigantic plastic trough would be tilted by mechanical levers and dumped in the middle of the desert. Most people do not think of where their trash goes, or what happens to it when it gets where it is going. Silva has prepared as best he can, for both the reality of what he will encounter there in Ryuuseigai and for the drop from the sky.

He stands in what little amount of space is left in the cargo bay, a walkway from the pilot's cabin to a maintenance station on the opposite end. The bins rattle, and Silva can hear the sound of clinking glass. He bends his knees in a lunge, trying to stretch as best he can in the limited space. Bracing his hands against one of the bins—green painted, and smells like spoiling food—he stretches and rotates each leg in turn. Despite his many talents, and the creative training regiments of his father and butlers, he has never before had the opportunity to go pitching through the sky. He will need to be very careful with his Nen, so that he does not hurt himself, or create too obvious of a crater from his impact. It would not do to be noticed that easily.

He flexes his arms, feeling the armored fabric expand. The shirt was a few years old, and a size too small, and he has no idea how Aster would have gotten a hold of it. It occurs to him, a moment later, that it had likely been kept with the expectation that Kosmos would grow into it.

He allows himself a few breaths to acknowledge his grief, then buries it just as quickly and tethers himself instead to routine. More stretches follow, and he checks that his bag is tied securely to his back. There are no windows in the hold, but there are a few lights bolted above the doors at either side of the walkway, and he had been told they would flare red and an alarm would blare in the minutes before the ship prepared to drop its cargo.

They have stayed silent, and he takes another minute to stretch his legs and flex his feet, sending his aura traveling around his body in the kind of anxious habit he thought he'd broken long ago. Then, the alarm blares without warning, and he almost pitches into the side of one of the bins.

He braces himself, one hand against each bin on either side of the slim walkway, and when the seam in the floor finally opens, a view of ash-colored ground and murky, formless clouds greets him, the angle uneven and dizzying. Wind whips immediately around his head, and as the floor drops out from under him he tightens his hold on the bins, bracing himself with only the strength in his hands and arms as his feet dangle beneath him into what looks like a mile of open air.

He swallows. He can feel perspiration starting to build around his palms. Then, like the lanes on a drawbridge, the sections of floor come to a vertical halt. The bins, rattling with all manner of refuse, begin to tilt forward. His grip slips, and he presses off against one side, lunging for the bin on the right and hanging on with both hands, as tight as he can. His only plan is to make sure that the trash falls before he does, so he does not have to worry about making it to the ground only to be pelted from above.

He clings to the underside of the bin as it drops completely open, spilling out hundreds of glass bottles. The constant motion has broken many of them already, shards of glass bouncing against one another, skittering over the rim of the trough to plummet downwards. A glance to either side confirms the contents of the rest of the troughs—rotten vegetation, food scraps, torn fabric, wrappers and sections of cardboard and printed styrofoam all spill into the air below.

There is a moment, where the bins hang open and empty and Silva counts the flares of the lights as the sections of the split floor prepare to rise up. He takes a deep breath, prepares himself, and lets go.

Surprisingly warm air greets him as he falls, his arms spread. His stomach flips with vertigo as his body tumbles; for a moment, it is as if the ground and sky are one and the same. Sheets of paper catch the wind and blow away, catching around his arms and floating without constraint, as if they could reach the empty horizon.

As his body straightens and his view clarifies, for the first time he gets a view of the city in front of him.

Gray structures of concrete or bleached wood rise in uneven rows without any thought to appearance or order. Surrounding them are pits of what he can now see are trash, just like what the airship has tossed away here. The largest pit appears to be in the center of the clusters of buildings, and as Silva tries to orient his body he realizes he will drop directly onto one of the pits on the outskirts of the city. Just as well, as now he can see specks of dark shapes, with all the detail of ants at this distance. The city is inhabited, he knows, but he considers any information he has on the subject more rumor than fact.

The city rushes towards him, and at the last moment he tucks his body close together, swathing his limbs in Nen and bracing his legs. He strikes the top of the pit with a heavy impact, his legs buckling but unharmed, his breath all but forced out of him as he sinks deep inside a bed of old tires and broken pieces of plaster. His fingers claw for the surface, the air suddenly clammy and unbreathable, and he struggles to climb the ten feet or more out until he reaches the top.

He flops onto his back, breathing heavily, shifting as a section of tire digs into his back. He is already tired, and now that he turns his head he can see the truly monumental size of both the pile he lays on, and the scale of the city beyond.

A few pieces of paper flutter to land around him. He allows himself one moment of rest.

He opens his eyes to see a few pebbles raining down the shifted terrain of the rubble pit. Some distance away, a few children climb a second pile of ripped tires, laughing amongst themselves.

Some of the rubble shifts around him, and when he sits up Silva begins to slide slowly downwards, catching himself on the looped strap of his bag. It appears blessedly undamaged, and when he goes to inspect it further he realizes he is being watched.

A shadow falls over his body from a figure standing over him. Rail-thin and dark-haired, the boy has the skinny, knobbly look of someone who has recently grown a great deal in a short amount of time. He is perched securely atop a few shredded pieces of cardboard with an ease borne of obvious habit. And he squints at Silva now as if he is seeing something he can not quite explain.

"Hello," Silva tries, rising up on unsteady legs. Even though he managed the impact unscathed, his limbs feel like jelly. If he were to encounter Xanthos now, unprepared and unprotected, he knows it would be disastrous. And besides, it would be wise to cultivate an ally in this place.

"My name is Silva," he continues. "I am looking for a guide."

The boy merely blinks and breathes, taking his time to answer. When he finally does, it is to extend an arm to Silva to pull him further out of the rubble. "I am Gotoh. You can come with me if you have nowhere to go. I think I know someone who can help you."

Silva nods, grateful for any assistance. He shoulders his bag, stopping every so often behind Gotoh as the boy reaches for various pieces of plastic packaging or twisted wires. Once he is satisfied with his haul, he continues without interruption down the rubble pit and across a bleak expanse of open dirt towards one of the many blockade skyscrapers that rise up, like an idea of a city. Like someone had tried to build a massive metropolis without ever having lived in one before or seen what one was supposed to look like.

He expects gridded streets, but instead Gotoh leads him through a maze of tunnels and tight, twisting passages formed into the sides of tall towers or fashioned out of sections of oversized pipes and stacked cinderblocks covered with sheets of corrugated metal.

The few people on the roads do not look at either of them, and every time the passageway gets too narrow to proceed it is Gotoh who steps aside for the others to pass. No one pays him any notice or deference, and while most of the citizens have that same lean, hungry look as Gotoh, there is a latent danger to many of the people he sees lurking in the corners of alleyways or watching from small balconies built into the ledges of the skyscrapers above their heads.

They finally turn a corner, pass under another section of pipe, and then the walls fall away and there is suddenly nothing but open space and the gray sky above. There is a kind of dull boom from the trio of buildings that bracket the space above—people shouting to one another from different raised platforms, an omnipresent mechanical grinding noise from a place Silva can not source, thunder cracking overhead. The buildings rise up as if each section, each room, and every detail of the split-leveled structures has been constructed without care or consultation from any other builder. The whole structure is startling in its immensity and foreboding in its composition.

After a moment with his neck craned back, Silva realizes the entire structure has been purposely designed to be oversized—the window openings are massive, the crenellations around the doorways and the decorations around the pillars supporting the upper floors are larger than those he has seen at a temple once on the Azian Continent. Some of the motifs he even recognizes, and others are foreign—every tower and wall seems to be festooned with objects and patterns from a variety of sources across the world, most in similar shades of rusted metal. Beside a plaster sculpture of a lion on one of the main platforms, a woman takes down clothing from a laundry line, the size of the clothing pinned to it comically small in comparison. Windows of varying sizes are cut out of the concrete walls, and Silva can see a few flickering lights from deep within. The overall effect is at once both overly familiar and imposing.

Gotoh does not pay the surroundings a glance, but he does swallow a bark of laughter at Silva's reactions. "You should keep that to yourself," he says. "No one from around here looks at Ryuuseigai like this. Where are you from?"

Silva looks back at him sharply, and while Gotoh falls silent, he is not deterred for long.

"Did you fall with the—"

Silva tries another look, one that would melt his siblings or a lesser butler in an instant. Gotoh shuffles forward, but keeps glancing back.

"Did you—"

"No." Silva folds his arms across his chest, and uses the full advantage of his height and build in one last attempt to intimidate his impromptu guide.

Instead of looking cowed like he expects, Gotoh pouts. The expression reminds him so strongly of Kosmos, that for one sudden moment he stops and feels something in his chest clench tightly. "Fine. One question."

Once more Gotoh muses over his options. He takes so long to answer that Silva assumes he will postpone his question, but then he speaks up with clear curiosity and an unexpected shrewdness.

"Why are you here?"

Silva answers immediately, preferring to speak out in the open where there is no one to overhear instead of in one of the many reverberating tunnels.

"I follow someone. I seek a man who owes me something. He thinks to escape me, but he will not."

Gotoh nods, as if such an explanation makes perfect sense. He looks as if he wants to say something more, and hesitates for only a moment before squaring his shoulders and looking Silva straight in the eye.

"You're probably wondering why I'm helping you. No one else will—you would have been turned in immediately if it was anyone else but me. I watched you fall from the sky, and I knew—I knew—you could help me."

Silva inclines his head, the same way Zeno likes to do to keep someone talking. It is all the encouragement Gotoh needs.

"I wasn't born here," he says, the words falling out of him in a rush now that he's started to speak, and the longer he talks the less easily he's able to contain them. "I was sent with the trash, as an infant. Raised here—but I've never forgotten I came from out there. It's my dream to go back one day. To see the places that cast me aside, and discover what I want the world to be for myself."

He casts an arm out, in the direction of the rubble pits and the flat plains and craggy mountains beyond them, an endless expanse of bleak grayish wilderness. It is no wonder no one thinks of leaving, if the only thing they know of the world is that it looks like this.

"If I help you, maybe one day, you can help me," Gotoh finishes, quietly.

Then, he continues, walking into an opening in the side of one of the buildings and climbing the narrow staircase inside. Silva follows at a distance, picking his way over the uneven steps and making sure not to catch his bag or the edges of his clothing on the nails sticking out of the patchwork walls. They climb flight after flight—hallways seem to jut out at every angle, without pattern or reason, and after what Silva estimates to be five minutes of climbing Gotoh takes one of the hallways and veers sharply to the left.

The hallway, like the stairway, is mostly dark, but every so often the walls are cut away completely on one side to reveal a staggering view of another building or the open square below. The path zigzags, with some doors set into either side of the walls, and other hallways or passageways cut through to splice the multiple buildings together. Gotoh seems to know where he is going, and after some distance he ascends a second set of stairs up to a small, circular landing. He knocks twice on the left-most door, and after a few seconds the door opens to reveal a young woman with dark skin and coiled hair.

"Gotoh!" She draws him into a hug. "I wasn't expecting you so soon."

Upon catching sight of Silva, she stiffens. "And you brought a friend? Listen, if you're one of the elder's thugs—"

"He is not," Gotoh answers smoothly. "May we come inside, please?"

She glares at him with an expression not unlike the one Gotoh had worn when they first met. There is no resemblance in their faces, but when she opens the door and lets them both inside, Gotoh immediately begins to make himself at home, setting his bounty from the rubbish heap in bins along one wall. The woman wears a tattered sweatshirt from a popular university in York New, the rips patched with shiny fabric in bright pinks and purples.

"I am sure there is a story to share," the woman continues, "about all of this." Her tone is much more gentle, but Silva recognizes the subtle inflections of politics behind it.

"My name is Ansenbee, and you find yourself within my home." The last is said with a pointed nod in his direction, as if the extension of hospitality grants with it a series of elaborate protections and customs. Silva nods back as if he understands. He doubts either of them trust him. He is unsure if he will even have the opportunity to earn or buy their trust.

He is equally unsure how to begin. "My brother is dead. I seek his killer."

"Name him," she says, immediately. Ansenbee's behavior is tense; her entire body language speaks of a kind of maternal, nearly feral protectiveness. She stretches out an arm, as if to cover Gotoh. "We will see him dragged to justice."

He bites his tongue. His profession has nothing to do with justice. "I come for revenge."

Ansenbee's expression is solemn. "We understand revenge. Tell me who you hunt."

"His name is Xanthos. I have his picture." Silva produces a thin photograph, something taken long in the past. The subject is not smiling, merely stares forward, his light eyes and blond hair visible even past the severe uniform and tight-fitting cap.

"The hair would be longer," he says. "He's very dangerous. He would be wounded, here and here." Silva points to a few places on his own body where he had attacked Xanthos the most. The photograph is passed first to the woman, then to Gotoh.

Gotoh lifts it towards the fading light from a rectangular cut-out set high into the far wall. He seems entranced by the shine to the glossy photography paper.

A suspicious cloud falls over Ansenbee's eyes the moment Silva produces the photograph, but she peers closer and studies the image with curiosity. "I've never seen this person before," she admits. "Have you?"

"They are not familiar to me," Gotoh says. "I'll go to the Mercato tomorrow, search the records for that name. Make some inquiries. You stand out too much. No one will notice me like they do you."

Silva feels a sudden fierce warmth well up within him from their support, matched only by his confusion at the same. "Why help me?" he asks.

There is a sudden loud knock at the door.

"I'll get it!" Ansenbee leaps to her feet, a broad smile stretching across her face as she opens the door. Silva can hear two voices outside, and soon the room is full to bursting with activity.

"I told him to let me carry it," a different woman is saying, her arms heaped with stacked crates. "But your husband insisted. I have everything you asked for, and then some. I even found some paperbacks."

She is followed by a short man in a faded button-down shirt and short-cropped black hair. His dark skin is sunburned in places across his nose and ears, and he bestows a warm smile upon Ansenbee. Silva notices that both the man and woman wear hammered metal rings on their fourth fingers.

"Francolin, give me that." Gotoh takes the crates and things the other man holds, and begins putting bits of food and supplies away, storing everything along the series of bins or the narrow countertop that runs above them. On the way, he exchanges a look with Silva, and shakes his head very softly. No disclosing more information, then.

"This is Kikyou. She can find anything out there—you need it, she knows where to get it!"

"For a price," the woman clarifies. She holds out a palm towards Ansenbee expectantly. She goes to the wall of bins, shuffling around in them for a moment before returning. She places a package in Kikyou's hands. From the angle it is hard to tell, but it looks like a popular brand of powdered drink mix. A handful of silver buttons follow it.

For the first time, she seems to notice Silva. Her eyes—impossibly black, and wide as saucers—alight on him with transparent interest. "And who is your guest?"

"Our guest," Ansenbee answers diplomatically.

"Of course." Kikyou waves one hand in a dismissive motion. "You barely have room for that child. Why not invite more stragglers into your midst."

"This is Gotoh's house as much as it is our own. It might as well be yours, too, for all that you are welcome here," Ansenbee says, her voice rising. "And for all the time you spend here."

Gotoh interjects. "She has no one else—"

"I'm Silva," he says, to the room at large. He is ignored.

"Do you not have all of Ryuuseigai? You are an excellent judge of character," Francolin says to his wife. "And I have always trusted your judgment. It does not matter to me who you wish to extend shelter to." He extends an arm towards Silva. "All of Ryuuseigai are our brothers and sisters."

"You never answered my question," Silva says to Gotoh. "Is that why you helped me?"

"No." He hesitates. "You have this...glow around you. Not many people have it. The elder does. Miss Kikyou does. And anytime I've seen it, I take notice."

Silva is shocked. The glow he describes could only be one thing. "You can sense Nen?"

"What's Nen?" Gotoh shrugs, his shoulders slumped. "Every year, the elder goes to the top of the largest pile, and drops a coin into the trash. No one is allowed to go there to rummage for a whole week. Then, everyone is let at once into the heap, to seek what they want. Whoever finds the coin first gets to go to the elder to claim a boon."

Silva listens intently; from the way the others nod along, it's clear they've heard this story before. His eyebrows furrow at another mention of the elder; upon lighting his eyes with Gyo, he sees the kid's aura, clear as day. Kikyou's is stronger still, but neither seem to realize how significant such a talent is.

"I was the one to find the coin, three years ago. I was brought in to see the elder, and when he asked me what I wanted I said I didn't know." He shuffles his feet, looking down. "I couldn't muster up the courage to ask for what I really wanted. Instead, he put his hands on my shoulders, and I felt this strange...weight, like a pressure, on the outside of my body. I was feverish for days, and when I finally recovered I could see things I couldn't before. Lights around people and objects. Strange phenomena in the air. Projections." His hands twist at his sides. "He let me keep the coin."

"And you can see this too?" Silva asks Kikyou.

Kikyou narrows her eyes. "There's a light around you, like there's dust in the air. If that's what you mean."

He doesn't think they understand the true meaning of Gotoh's story, or what had happened to him. So instead, he merely says, "The one I am searching for has a glow just like that."

"What does it mean?" Kikyou asks him. "I've often wondered."

"It is a boon, in a sense. It means that you are strong." He turns to Gotoh. "Stronger than anyone would think. Stronger than you realize."

"It's why no one bothers me in the streets," he offers, answering the question that had once been on Silva's mind. "It's why I can ask around about your target and no one will give me too much trouble for it. The elder recognized me. No one is more important than the elder."

"I see," Silva says. He is reminded again, suddenly, of his own family. Of Zeno, and Aster's position as the heir.

"Will you be staying with us, Silva?" Francolin asks, shuffling through one of the crates. "We can host you for dinner, but there is not room for you to spend the night. Is your own dwelling so far from here?"

"He lives past Fuensalida, by the tower," Gotoh answers swiftly.

"Ah. Near you, then, Kikyou," Francolin says, gesturing with an elbow towards the window, where the light outside is already getting thin. "You could help her carry her things. We left quite a few crates outside, for her other clients. And you have room for stragglers, as you put it."

"I can manage," she says, loudly and with a scowl. "I don't require any aid."

"I can pay you." Silva thinks he's beginning to understand elements of the strange barter system they have here. "I'll only want a little bit of your time. There are things I need to know."

She watches him with a kind of unexpected shrewdness, and then her eyes flit right over his shoulder to where he knows Gotoh is standing. A moment passes, and whatever she sees there seems to appease her, because her posture relaxes just slightly and she nods at Silva.

"For payment," she says, slowly. "Sure."

They say their goodbyes to the family inside and then depart. Once outside, Kikyou takes great delight in piling a series of rough-hewn wooden crates into his hands, each full of the kinds of goods he would have never thought valuable in a place like this—fabrics of all kinds, empty containers made of glass and plastic and thick waxed cardstock, clusters of hotel ballpoint pens and stacked scraps of paper a foot high, a burlap sack filled with dirt, and a single flower bulb, partially open, tucked precariously inside. No money, no precious metals or jewels or any kind of adornment that he would previously have attributed to status or success. There's one crate that appears to be full of bricks, many of them shattered in pieces, but still important enough to preserve. Kikyou's hands are empty.

"You handle that well," is all she says of the strength—not even Nen-enhanced—that enables him to easily lift the stack and keep it balanced against his shoulders or hips as he navigates the uneven stairs back to the ground.

"I'd think you were one of the elder's men," she continues, when there's a moment of calm and no one else around. "The ones he sends out to be assassins and mercenaries for the outside world. They come back, looking like you."

He remains quiet, just letting her talk. She has a high-pitched voice that's just a hair on the side of pleasant. Her strange eyes stare back at him, unblinking.

"But that's not the case, is it? You're dangerous, aren't you?"

"I am an assassin," he says, as they march across that large square and into a different section of Ryuuseigai. "You had that much right. As for the rest...we'll talk later."

Even now he's aware of the people around him—older, scarred men and women crowding around firepits or sitting on railings, sharpening weapons and watching the crowd. Some are sharing food; some are getting into fights. Some are so wizened and gray, just like their surroundings, that it is impossible to tell their age at a glance. A startling number are children even younger than Gotoh. One watches the two cross into a second tunnel from around a corner with startlingly perceptive blue eyes.

Kikyou crosses the length of the city, moving through tunnels and passageways with confidence and speed, uncaring for Silva's burden or even the growing darkness. Every so often, she will meet someone at the junction of a crossroad and unload something from the crates. Often she will take something in return, and then Silva is responsible for holding on to lengths of cording or sets of dented silverware.

The building she leads him to is constructed from stacked panels of concrete and appears older by far than what he has seen, the surfaces of the walls bleached by the sun and scored smooth by wind. He pauses at the bottom of a metal staircase and shifts the remaining bundles in his arms.

"How many floors?" he asks, already resigned to the answer.

"Fifteen," she says, not even trying to hide a laugh. "Come on."

By the time they arrive at a crooked door set into the very end of a narrow hallway, Silva's calves and back ache more than even the worst of his early training. There's just something about the environment that both keeps him on constant alert and drains him of every last bit of his energy in a way that he would find demoralizing if he was not so committed to seeing his mission through.

Her apartment is laid out much like Ansenbee's had been—one large open room, with a few doorways leading to smaller rooms beyond, with no appliances, minimal furniture, and long rows of countertops or cubbies for storage. Instead, however, Kikyou's space is unexpectedly decorated.

Pieces of magazines have been cut out and pasted across the walls, the similar colors and editorial styles grouped together in a kind of artistic decoupage, fading from blue to purple to red to orange where it meets the window. The lone, oblong beanbag-styled sofa is covered with tasseled pillows. A chess board, missing seven pieces, is set up on a table in front of the sofa. The cracked cement floor is covered with worn-out rugs in over-elaborate patterns; the furniture and additional stacks of crates have been positioned over the most worn spots. The gigantic cutout along one wall for the window is covered by a decorative screen, the edges capped by carvings of wildlife scenes, the animals foreign to both Yorubia and his home continent.

Silva approaches the window and lifts a finger to trace along the patterns on the screen. He glances back at Kikyou, clad in the same faded and dark colors he'd seen on the townspeople outside. Some of the magazine pages are old, and feature a kind of editorial style that hasn't been in fashion in years, but seeing it here is enough to make him think that Kikyou is rebellious, just like Gotoh—or maybe even more so.

She sets her things down and watches him.

He remembers the child with the blue eyes. The same sharp perception. It's something shared by both Kikyou and Ansenbee. "You were born here, weren't you?"

"Are you asking if I was dropped from the sky, like a stork with a basket?" Her high-pitched voice wavers. "So many were. I was not."

"A stork?" He's never heard that one before. "That can't be true."

"What do you know about truth? Have you not done nothing but lie to me, lie to my friends?"

He takes a chance. "I came with the day's trash. I'm from a place called Padokia, far from here. From a family of assassins. It's true I seek my brother's killer. And it's true that he is here, and that I intend to kill him."

She goes very still. "You would take something from Ryuuseigai?"

"What?"

"We accept everything," she intones, almost like some sort of prayer, "so do not take anything from us."

"What does that mean?"

"All we have are things that were discarded. They weren't given to us as a gift, they were thrown away. So no one has any right to take them back."

"And this man—Xanthos," Silva says. "My research could not confirm if he is from here or not. But he has some connection to it, or he would not have chosen this place to hide. This place is impossible for almost anyone else to reach. And even beyond its distance and inhospitability, its citizens are its first defense. And what if he is here to take advantage of that protection?"

Kikyou crosses her slim arms across her chest, her expression unconvinced. "I didn't recognize him, but even I don't know everyone here. Gotoh's research will either turn something up, or it won't."

"You trust him very much. You like him even more. He's a likable kid. Good judgment. I knew it was a risk to come here. I thought I'd have to count every single person I met among my enemies. I never expected to find a friend. Gotoh seems to think it worth the risk. What about you?"

"We were born here," Kikyou says. "But Gotoh was not. He was only an infant, he does not remember life outside this place, but he has never stopped dreaming of one day returning to the world beyond Ryuuseigai. We try to tell him such dreams are impossible, but he does not listen. I imagine this is why he approached you. Anyone else would have turned you in, or been hostile themselves."

"I said I could pay you," Silva says, and pulls his duffle bag from around his shoulders and begins rifling through the compartments. "Name your price."

When he looks away, the energy in the room seems to abate like the tide rushing out. When he looks back, Kikyou has moved to one of the countertops and fills a melamine tumbler with water from a pitcher in the corner. She returns and sits on the sofa and places the cup on the table. One of the packets of drink mix is lined up beside it.

"Do you know," she says conversationally, "I've always hated the way the water tastes here. It hardly ever rains, did you know? There's a lake, miles from here. It gets filled with runoff from the mountains. People will drive all the way to the lake just to bring back water. There's minerals, or something, in it. You can't filter out the taste. That's why I ask Gotoh to bring me things like this whenever he finds them."

Silva is reminded that he hasn't had anything to eat or drink since before he left for the airfield that morning. It seems half a lifetime ago, now. Food he can manage without for a time, but water is something else—especially with the dryness of the air and the strain of the skydive. He does not realize until this moment just how much he'd like a drink. The cup she drinks from is discolored from age and use, but he thinks the water inside might be just as clouded, too. His lip curls back.

She rips open the package and pours the powder inside the cup, tilting it to clear the powder coating the sides of the glass and then stirring with a finger. Slowly, the water turns a very pale pink.

Inside the duffle bag, the remains of his cash are bundled up next to a few rows of newly-minted gold bars. Silva takes one out and slides it across the table. Kikyou takes a slow, delicate sip of her drink.

"I think I'd like a glass, too," he continues.

She looks at the gold, then back at him, and laughs in his face. "What am I supposed to do with that?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Maybe one of the metalworkers would be able to do something with that, but I can't sell it or trade it in the streets. The Mercato has no need of it. What use is gold to me?"

"Then what am I supposed to do for food and water, in a place like this? This is all I have to give you. Outside, this would be worth thousands. You could buy anything you wanted with it."

His face is still unmistakably astonished, and Kikyou lifts the glass and drains most of it in a single gulp. What remains is thick with undissolved grit, and she considers it for a moment as Silva takes a perch on the ground opposite her.

She sets the glass back down, pressing it closer to Silva, and slides the gold off the table and into her palm.

Silva picks up the glass and brings it to his mouth. There's a mild synthetic sweetness and an unpleasantly chalky texture to the water, but it does what it's supposed to do.

There's a lipstick print on the other side.

Everyone in Ryuuseigai starts moving at daybreak, and Kikyou is no exception, rousing Silva from his torpor and dragging him to accompany her as she makes the rounds in her circle of suppliers. She extracts another gold bar from him in exchange for breakfast.

"So it's different from what Gotoh does?" he asks, yawning, as Kikyou sets a brisk pace through a completely different area of the city. Here, gigantic steel pylons stick out of the ground at all angles, a last-ditch attempt to prop up a building that seems to be sinking slowly into the soft soil, the stacked floors above tilted at a fifteen degree angle towards the sky. He is reminded, perhaps paradoxically, of the bow of a ship cutting through the water.

"I'm a supplier," she says, "not a scavenger. I haven't needed to do that since I was even younger than that child. I have contacts and buyers and I am very good at sourcing things that people need. I do not stumble through the trash looking for scraps."

"I was once abandoned in the wilderness of the Cradle forest and forced to fend for myself and find my own way back to my homeland, without any money or supplies," Silva finds himself saying. "My parents requested it of my sister and then myself, when I was older. It was a part of my training. It strengthened my Nen." A thought occurs to him. "Your ability to see and use Nen—did it come about like Gotoh's encounter with this elder?"

She shook her head. "I don't remember not being able to do it. I suppose I thought it was something everyone could do, to some degree. I must have been very young when it happened. Too young to really remember clearly. I've never known any other way."

"What about your family? Have they ever shown a similar potential for Nen?"

She stiffens and turns her head away from him, exposing the delicate line of her neck. A muscle in her jaw tightens, and when she responds he has never heard her voice sound so hard and asperous. "Any family I had died a very long time ago. I remember that much."

He can not stop his musing. The subject is fascinating to him—he has not actively involved himself with the training of their butlers, but he has often thought of ways to improve and expand the program. "Is it possible just living here sharpens your focus so much that any ordinary citizen can become capable of extraordinary things?"

"Shut up, Silva."

He wants to know more—he wants to get a bowl and fill it with water and pluck a leaf off the ground and see what Nen type she has to get some greater idea of what she is capable of—but refrains from asking more about what is obviously a delicate subject for her. As the morning advances, Silva is helpful when it is required of him and silent whenever Kikyou speaks to another individual or takes to complaining about the heat, or the noise, or the company.

He thinks he is just beginning to understand the strange layout of this city when Kikyou turns the corner of a building patterned with old billboards and suddenly he is standing at the edge of what looks to be a sprawling market set in the basin of a ditch spanning nearly twenty acres in a neat rectangular formation. The surrounding buildings rise up right to the edge of the ditch, and stairs made of cracked pieces of stone descend into the midst of the commotion with all the grandeur of a sovereign estate.

While many of the market sections are covered by awnings and tents connected by ropes to the edges of the closest buildings, the middle is completely open, and swarming with tenants shouting over tables and people lounging together around circular benches made of stacked pieces of that same cracked stone. As he follows Kikyou underneath a triangular awning made of bleached white linen, Silva is again reminded of the sails of a ship. It feels like he is standing on the banks of a stream, surrounded by creatures and plants completely foreign to him, and he has never been more aware that he is somewhere far from home. There is nothing here to connect him to the place he has left; nothing familiar to cling to in its absence. He has even suppressed his Nen with Zetsu on the off chance he encounters his target, and as his eyes sweep the throngs of people he can not even comfort himself by seeking out the presence of aura in the crowds or objects before him.

Then, Kikyou grabs at his arm, tugging him forward. He is unaware he had stopped moving, and allows her to drag him over to a stall where an older woman, clearly waiting for her to arrive, receives the remainder of the goods Silva carries in exchange for boxes of prepackaged meals and a few containers of batteries. They are easy enough for him to carry, and he follows Kikyou as she browses a few of the booths. His surroundings have more than enough to draw his attention, but as he glances back to Kikyou he notices the pursed lips and overall dissatisfaction in her expression.

He waits until there is a lull in her occupation before asking. "What is it you are looking for?"

"A young lady, the sibling of someone in the elder's corps, has requested something of me I am unable to fulfill." From the tone of her voice, he understands this is something that does not happen often.

"And what is that?"

"She wants a mirror. The largest I can find. I don't know why, exactly. To reflect candlelight, or make her space look bigger—"

"To look at herself, surely," Silva finishes, glancing at the market stall on their right. Vastly overripe vegetables are spread out across a dingy towel. Any amount of personal items—things like accessories or jewelry, eyeglasses or combs—are nowhere to be seen. It is not difficult to believe that in a place where survival takes priority, people would have little need or appreciation for nonessentials. Then he remembers the lipstick print on Kikyou's drinking glass. He steals a glance at her; her lips are painted ever-so-slightly red. He wonders where she would have found the lipstick, and what she would get out of wearing such a thing here.

Kikyou's expression changes, and he tracks the way confusion mingles, however briefly, with jealousy and bitterness.

"When was the last time you saw your own face?" he asks, hesitant of drawing her ire. There is a spark of it, in her eyes, but it vanishes just as quickly. Instead, she withdraws, her shoulders slumping.

"What does it matter? What would one even do with that knowledge?"

He opens his mouth, but finds he has nothing to say to her. He would say that he sees the faces of his parents in the slope of his cheeks and the line of his jaw. He looks as different from Kosmos as day and night, yet they shared the same color of their eyes and the same easy smile. He remembers how, one day, he had refused to let Aster treat his injuries from training, and had dealt with them himself, applying ointment and bandages in his bathroom in front of a mirror that spanned the length of the whole wall. He could use it to see the scars on his back or to cut his own hair.

"You have black eyes," he says, shrugging. Her guarded expression softens.

"What?"

"Black like pitch. And a few freckles, here." He draws one of his hands across the tops of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. "You spend too much time in the sun. If you went inside, I think they would go away."

She hasn't moved away, and continues to stare at him with those same wide, black eyes. Feeling embarrassed, he drops his hand. He doesn't tell her that her skin was warm, or soft, or that her hair looked coarse and mussed from the heat. He tells himself it is not about paying her compliments; she wanted to know how she looked.

To change the conversation, he asks, "What is the strangest thing anyone has ever asked you to find?"

"Strangest?" She laughs. "Your interpretation of that would be very different from mine, would it not?"

"Most difficult," he amends.

There is a pause, while Kikyou considers the question. "Some things that you would not find strange, like medications, are very difficult to source. As for strangest, well, you saw Gotoh."

"What?" He does not understand, and once he does, he has trouble believing it is as she says.

"Ansenbee asked for a child. She wanted to conceive, but such a thing is difficult here. There are many children—too many, but she asked me to find her one that she could raise. I told you—I am good at finding things that people need. I am very good at it. And I owed her something. A debt."

"For what?" he asks. She does not answer.

A moment later, a figure steps out of the crowd, small and scrawny. Gotoh reaches their small group and beams up at them, his eyes squinting against the sun. "I found out what you wanted to know," he says.

"Should we talk here?" Silva asks. The noise of the Mercato is buzzing, louder than even the shouting and clamor in the open square the day before. No one around them seems to be paying either of them any attention.

"It's fine," Kikyou says. "Tell us what you learned."

"The man you described came into Ryuuseigai as part of an envoy the elders sent to assist members of the Mafia a few months ago. A complete company left, and only two came back. This man was with them now. A small team. There was only one truck. Easy to track."

"And where is he now?" Silva asks.

"I don't know. The other man—I saw him. Light hair, short. Scar over one eyebrow. But the soldiers like to hang out around the air well. We could go look."

"Can you fight?" Silva asks Gotoh, immediately regretting the question when the boy turns his thin arms up in an aggressive stance. He looks over at Kikyou, who shrugs. He is not sure if she would enjoy a fight as he does. She does not seem the type, but then again, how well does he truly know her?

"You stay here," he tells Gotoh, before stretching an arm towards the edge of the market. "Both of you. Just point me in the direction of this air well, and I'll go take a look for myself."

Kikyou looks unimpressed. "It's that way, for one." She gestures across the sea of tents, towards a structure he had somehow missed, swathed as it was by strips of cloth. The top of a round, semiopaque building was just barely visible through a series of sails stretched from the corner of one building to one of many tall posts driven into the ground around the perimeter of the market.

Silva stands, and begins to pick a path through the alleyways and stalls in the direction she had pointed. Kikyou stands a moment later, whispering something to Gotoh who flees and disappears into the crowd.

Kikyou returns to his side, and Silva slows his pace to accommodate her. No one is rushing, here—there is nothing to rush to, and no time to keep. An air well, she tells him as they draw closer, is a structure that collects water by drawing moisture from the air through condensation. The water trucked in from the lake is for drinking, she says, and the condensed water here is suitable only for washing. There's something about the state of the air, some kind of pollution, that makes it unusable, but Silva has never been a scientist and accepts her explanations at face value.

The exterior of the well is comprised of a kind of slate rock stacked like bricks, with evenly-spaced gaps to let in air. The top is domed, and imposing in its height—he is reminded of some of the other buildings, massive and distant whether he was several blocks away or standing right in front of them.

Even as they exit the Mercato, the traffic and noise remains. There are very few people on the streets even a block or two away, and while Kikyou is alert she seems to want to hang back, to watch him rather than join him in moving forward.

"What will you do," she says slowly, "when you find your brother's killer?"

"I thought I told you this earlier." His eyes scan every doorway, every face, as though each one could be a threat. "I intend to collect my vengeance."

"But what does that mean to you?" she presses.

"I will take from him what he took from me," he says. "I am an assassin. And like you, I am very good at my job."

"Very well." She seems content, now. As if she is drawing some personal satisfaction from the achievement of his mission. As if, he suspects, she has vengeance of her own she would pursue if she could, and in its place, she draws a vicarious joy from watching him complete his. Maybe he should offer her more than gold for her help.

The door to the air well is staffed by a few men who offer them no acknowledgement as they pass. They are tall and broad-shouldered, and wear their hair shaggy and loose like Silva's. It is no wonder the others had thought initially he was one of their number.

Beyond the air well is a wide, round tunnel that links to another, much older trash pit. This one, Kikyou tells him, is used more for construction waste instead of airdrops like the pits at the fringes. This one is picked over, full of the things that even no one else here wants. Blocks of cement, sections of pipe too rusted to be of use, scraps of wood and dented bits of metal whose initial purpose Silva could not begin to imagine. The ground smells like it is full of chemicals, and the air is very quiet.

There is a man standing alone at the mouth of the tunnel, his back to the curved walls. He appears much less poised than the guards he had seen at the air well, rocking on his feet and glancing over at Silva before looking away, as if expecting to see someone else.

His blonde hair is in disarray and there is a thick white scar over his left eyebrow.

Silva stops in his place, turning on his heel before he even realizes what he is doing. He crowds forward, into this person's space, and his mind catches up with him before he can curl his fingers around the other man's throat.

"Are you waiting for a man named Xanthos?"

He looks baffled. "Who is that?"

Silva reaches for his bag—it isn't there, instead he's carrying a rucksack with nothing but Kikyou's batteries in it—with every intention of ripping Xanthos's photograph from it to present to the clear impostor standing in front of him. His hands come away empty, and the blonde man continues to look confused. Kikyou remains at a distance, breathing heavily, her wide eyes unsure.

"Tell me the truth! The man you came back with on the mission for the mafia! He wasn't there—he was with me! He has to fight me!"

"I came back with my brother," he says, his voice rising. "I don't know what you're talking about. We were all that survived! There was an explosion...he pulled my unconscious body from the rubble..."

Silva does not understand. The blonde man continues to babble. "It was a miracle-!"

"Silva," Kikyou says, with some urgency.

He had thought the area was quiet, but now he notices a sound, steadily growing louder. Footprints, of someone moving quickly. Moving closer.

The fist comes out of nowhere, the moment between him noticing the sound of footsteps and the arrival of their owner barely longer than it takes him to blink. Silva tries to dodge, stepping away, but Xanthos is faster. Faster than he'd been before. Xanthos's fist collides with the center of Silva's face.

Are his injuries healed that much already? He tries to think, but he's being punched again and suddenly he can feel the moment when Xanthos's ability takes and he doubles over, his throat suddenly thick and full of the most vile taste imaginable.

He has a hard time thinking about why Xanthos would take this sense over any of the others when he has to worry about fighting not only Xanthos, but this new opponent as well. He covers his body with Nen, absorbing the attacks from the blonde soldier while trying to force Xanthos closer towards the end of the tunnel and out into the light.

Silva surges forward, getting a few good kicks in, and spins around to try and pin Xanthos when he points a finger and shouts out to his comrade, "The woman! Grab her!"

The blonde soldier lunges for Kikyou instead, who stumbles forward with a shriek, shoes scrabbling against the tunnel floor as she runs.

Even with the skills developed after a lifetime of living in Ryuuseigai, she is unable to evade him for long, running out of the tunnel and straight into a natural eave created by the rubble pit. She ducks under a rusted pylon and is gone, and as Silva loses sight of her he puts all of his energy into trying to disable Xanthos, here and now.

His body shakes as whatever acrid taste coats the inside of his mouth gets even stronger; Xanthos offers only the most fleeting alarm as his compatriot runs after Kikyou. They fight, and Silva realizes quickly that in the confined spaces of the tunnel, he cannot use any of his abilities without bringing the entire structure down upon their heads. On instinct, he leaps back, and is rewarded when Xanthos leaps after him in turn. As slowly as he dares, Silva tries to bring the fight closer and closer to the mouth of the tunnel.

He hears a scream, and the sound of a fight. Another idea strikes him, and he allows Xanthos to hit him again, just as he had back when they fought in the pastel city. This time, however, he is careful that Xanthos's punch will send him flying out of the tunnel and into the sloping fringes of the piles of dirt and rubble. Thinking he has the upper hand, Xanthos is quick to advance.

Silva rises from the dirt, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth on instinct. He has to remind himself that Xanthos's ability is no more than illusion as he finds himself in the middle of a fight once again, ducking punches and doing his best to find steady footing as they travel through the midst of the rubble pile. His footing slips, and a punch sends him crashing to the ground once more.

He blinks as the new perspective offers him a view of the surrounding pit through a piece of mesh fencing, half-buried in the soil. He spots Kikyou, pressed back into the debris, her face pale and streaked with dirt. The other soldier advances, and Silva gags as the chemicals that permeate the ground around them threaten his already precarious grasp on his faculties.

Xanthos stands before him, wearing an exultant smile. Silva knows he has a choice to make, and before he can give himself any time to regret it he is moving forward, towards Kikyou, tackling the figure poised to harm her and driving the soldier's body straight into one of those outstretched rusty pylons.

The thick wire protrudes from the man's chest, and Silva knows with grim certainty that he will prove a problem for them no longer. With the last strength in his body, he reaches out an arm towards Xanthos. Silva follows the extension of his hand and watches Xanthos, standing on the top of a pile of brittle shards of wood. He watches this activity with brutal apathy before turning and disappearing in an untraceable blur of movement.

The expression on the man's face changes into sudden, horrific grief. It occurs to Silva that the reason none of them have had their vision taken from them is that Xanthos has already used his ability on this man here. When he looks at Xanthos, it is clear to Silva now that he sees the face of one of his allies instead of this stranger. What was it the man had said?

Realization further clarifies into a soft, grounded rage. He said he had returned with his brother. Xanthos could control the use of any person's senses, and he had made this stranger believe that he was seeing the face of one of the men who had died in pursuit of whatever mission had originally called them away. Silva cannot imagine what it would be like, to be faced with the image of Kosmos again, and in such a way.

"Come on," Kikyou says, pushing the pieces of corrugated metal and plastic fragments aside as she makes her way to him. "Let's go, before anyone else sees this. We can't be here when this body is found."

Silva allows her to take him by the arm and lead him away. He pays no attention to the path they take, and submits to her again when she takes the things he'd so readily carried for her earlier. He cannot name the reason he'd chosen to save her rather than kill his enemy.

He decides, after some time of deep introspection, that it is not that he does not want Xanthos to take any more lives than he already has. The lives of these people mean nothing to him. It is that it was Kikyou's life that was in jeopardy. He had thought it would not matter what it would cost to complete his revenge. But now, he has decided that while he can sacrifice many things, he will not sacrifice her life for this.

Kikyou purchases a water allotment for him with a significant amount of undisguised scorn, only relenting when he reminds her he has to continue to stay with her, and if she wants him to do so smelling like one of the garbage pits he crawled through then he will of course defer to her wishes, and so she claims another handful of gold pieces for herself and he gets five minutes of time in the bathing chambers and a small wedge of soap.

A large portion of the lowest floor of each building is devoted to areas for hygiene and bathing, with rudimentary showers rigged from perforated troughs he controls with a length of string. No towel is provided, and there are no mirrors, either, although the communal space is blessedly empty of other visitors for the entirety of his stay.

The facility also has larger tubs for washing clothes, but that costs more than what Silva is given, so he showers quickly and saves the remainder of his water and the last bits of soap to scrub what grime he can from his shirt.

Standing there, on the cracked cement floor, he puts his pants, shoes, and socks back on his damp body. He wrings his wet shirt out over a grate, then rolls it up and drapes it across the back of his neck. He's seen a few people in the area walk around in similar states of undress, and if it happens to be a crime, well, he knows how people in Ryuuseigai deal with those. He feels good about his chances.

The unfinished fight against Xanthos still bothers him more than he'd like to admit, and for this reason he takes his time returning to Kikyou's apartment, lingering in the exterior courtyard and enjoying the rare sight of the sun as it passes between two blanket-like clouds.

Someone in the stairwell is playing music on some kind of multi-stringed instrument he doesn't recognize, something soft and plaintive, and it digs at him. He growls at the musician, and the music falters as he strolls past and takes the uneven stairs one at a time. A few floors up, it returns, the player clearly unintimidated by an absent threat, and now the music is even softer to his ears, even more sorrowful. A further five floors, and he is unable to hear it at all.

When he reaches Kikyou's front door he is sullen and distraught for reasons he cannot even begin to explain. The door has been left unlocked for him, and he barges through, forgetting to catch it so it slams closed behind him. Kikyou stands before him, by the table, sorting batteries.

She takes one look at him, her eyes sweeping across his body in the way that one would otherwise consult a map. Her eyes follow him from shoulder to ribs to clenched fists, to pay special attention to a drop of water that bends and rolls across his clavicle. She winds up, at last, at his face.

"You seem so unconcerned." It comes out with a heavy breath, and she watches again as he paces the small room, turning when he gets to one end of the wall the way an animal might, rolling its shoulders and huffing in disagreement.

"About what?" She sets the battery down in a stack, completing a pyramid, before picking up another.

"You almost died. What would have happened, then?"

"Death is everywhere. There was a death ceremony, taking place outside when we left, earlier this morning. Did you notice? The body is taken out, beyond the pits, and left there with the hope a bird or creature might come to get it. Then, the deceased's belongings are distributed to those that knew them best. An elder is always there, to preside. It is a common occurrence."

She tests one of them with some kind of homemade contraption of wires and patches. Seemingly satisfied, she sets it aside.

"Common?" He stops pacing, but is unable to stop the heavy breathing, like he has just completed some great athletic task. Her eyes sweep again for a moment down the length of his chest as he inhales and exhales.

"Yes, common." She turns away, and instead of her face he is left with the view of the length of her neck and the way her hair is twisted up.

"There are so many ways one might die here. Starvation, disease. Cold, injury. Sometimes it is someone else, sometimes there is only yourself to blame."

He starts at that, recoiling several steps back across the worn piece of carpeting. "It is something everyone here knows," she continues. "I had thought an assassin of all people would understand."

He tries to speak, the words caught in his mouth. The thirst that had never quite left returns to settle against the hollow of his throat.

"Perhaps what you have not realized is that until very recently, I had accepted the truth that I would one day die here." Kikyou continues to speak, the once placid tone rising with pitch and increasing in volume. "I never thought it would be any other way."

He reaches out, to settle a hand against her back, to feel the way she breathes; it is every bit as forceful as his own. She still faces away from him.

"So you see, I really am quite upset," she finishes. "But not about that."

When he turns, taking a few decisive steps until he stops to stand in front of her, he is surprised by just how dark her eyes have become. They were always unusually so, but now the pupils are even more exaggerated, the small line of iris barely visible around all that black.

When he reaches for her, she folds herself into his arms as though she has always belonged there. Her wide features render every expression that crosses her face without subtlety, and a shiver passes through him. He tightens his arms and drops his face into her hair.

She reminds him like a flower that grows upon a rock, in a place and climate that doesn't suit it, thriving despite its every obstacle. He wants to imagine her elsewhere, wondering how she might have flourished if she had been born, like him, in Padokia.

"You will not die here," he says to her, making the promise into her hair. "I will take you from this place. When I leave, you will be coming with me."

"I want the world that you have," she says, tilting her face up towards him. Her eyes, so dark, draw him in like a vortex in a swirling sea. "I want to wake up to that sun. I want to drink from your cup and feast at your table. I want it more than I've ever wanted anything else in my life."

Her words are having a dizzying effect on him. His blood rings in his ears, and although his skin has never felt so hot, he breaks out into another shiver when her arms come up to circle around his neck. "What else do you want?" he asks. "I'll give you anything."

"Surprise me," she says with a smile, the first smile she's ever bestowed upon him, and he thinks he'd do anything to see it again, to make sure that it would never leave her face.

Instead, he kisses her, and when she presses him down onto the floor he goes without complaint.

The view from the screened window shows a deep scratch in the earth, a narrow gorge that by necessity limits any other buildings from rising up close to hers. The ground beyond is flat and dry, empty of all vegetation for what looks like miles. He had expected the darkened sky to render the view inoperative, but with no light pollution the moonlight and the canvas of stars above give the surrounding buildings a kind of unearthly, softened glow.

Across the chasm, he can see a ruined structure of bleached white stone. It resembles a temple or palace—an open, airy building of arches, columns, and carved reliefs and cornices. The faceted columns that ring its perimeter are cracked in places and then been reassembled. The effect at that distance is not unlike the veining found in the expensive marble of historic statues. One side is significantly taller than the other, and it seems even now unfinished, as though it has been rebuilt without enough pieces. Perhaps the pieces had all been dug out of the trash together and then rebuilt; he has seen such things in the open square, statues and ornaments with cracks and flaws, displayed nonetheless.

"Take this." He presses a gold bar into Kikyou's hands, then directs her towards a candle burning down to the stub. "Gold is reflective. Use the back of it as a mirror."

He watches her hold it up, angling it to better see her own face. He watches the way her mouth pinches at what she sees, her reflection boasting first the wide forehead and disheveled hair, then the elegant nose and rough skin. She opens her mouth, looks at her teeth.

"You're very beautiful," he says, as if to reassure her. She makes an odd expression at that, her dark eyes drawn to its copy in the mirrored gold.

"It's not what I thought." Another glance in the mirror, a strange uncertainty in the face found there. "I don't feel much like myself, either."

"You can be whatever you want," he says.

"Is that what it is like, where you are from?"

He thinks of his parents, and the training of his family, and falters. "Uh. No."

A thin smile graces her lips. There's a bit of smugness found there.

"Which one feels like you?" He points towards the wall of pasted magazine editorials, and she sets the gold bar aside to scramble over towards the array. After a moment of contemplation, she pulls an image from the wall and brings it over to him.

"This one," she says, handing it over.

The image is of a woman, tall and dark-haired like Kikyou, wearing an elegant evening dress. There is no backdrop but the setting has been washed purple.

It is the posture that draws his attention. The woman in the image is confident and refined, and she looks over her shoulder at the photographer. An advertisement at the bottom has been partially torn away.

He hands it back. There is half an opinion forming in his mind, that another's conception of a person is different than what they see through their own eyes, and how the former is so very unlikely to change. He would share this with her, but then he looks at her and is distracted again.

Her eyes fix upon a bruise she has left upon his chest. There are others, across his body, remnants from the prior fight.

They do not leave her apartment for three whole days.

Kikyou shows him where she's stacked the gold bars he's given her, hidden away in a basket of cardboard covered with the same decoupaged magazine pages, these of sunsets and seashores and forest-covered mountains. In a neat row are the six bars of new-minted gold, and beside them is a hairpin of the same material, the elongated shape covered with inlaid rubies.

"Sometimes bodies come in with the garbage," she says, plucking the hairpin without ceremony from the basket and sliding it back into place underneath her bed. "This was...maybe three, four years ago? A woman, clearly of some importance from the way she was dressed. Heavy velvet clothing, and finery—rings on every finger. People fought over the diamonds—they can cut anything, did you know? But her hair was twisted back, and this got overlooked. I took it from her corpse myself."

"Likely a political assassination," Silva muses, thinking privately that it was very sloppily done if the body was disposed of in such a way. Such carelessness has never mattered to him—the bodies of their family's targets are simply left where they lay. Their power is such that no one would dare to come after them—and if they do, and the Zoldycks are unable to defend against it, then what does that say about their skills? Zeno's lessons repeat in his head like a record on a turntable, and it is with some difficulty that he pushes them aside to once more pay attention to her.

She twists her long hair up in a low chignon and secures it with the pin. It is almost hidden in her black hair, and the dull sparkle of the rubies makes her worn and stained clothing so much more conspicuous. He reaches out to run his knuckles up her spine.

There is a moment like the pressure of changing altitude where he feels a Nen signature from far away. He sits up immediately, moving towards the screen-covered window and staring at the tower remnants beyond. A figure stands atop it, barely visible, their Nen a familiar and unexpected comfort.

Without a second thought, Silva peels the wooden screen free, leaving a line of rusted nails sticking out of the wall, and leaps towards it. He clears the distance in a single bound, and it is only the strange despair in Kikyou's voice that calls after him as he jumps that makes him turn his head back to look at her, watching her grow smaller inside the window as he lands steadily on the reconstituted marble.

He continues to stare back at her, his concentration only broken at the clearing of a throat.

Aster stands comfortably atop the broken plinth of a column, stacked in an awkward formation beside the cross-sections of the tower. Her scope is tucked around the side of her face to cover her right eye, the gun mounted on her back by a framework he has never seen before.

"I was training, before all this. Attempting to achieve multiple new transformations," she says by way of explanation. "It is not ideal, certainly not as strong as the sniper form, but this has machine-action firing capabilities. I imagine it will be more useful if we have to fight in this kind of environment."

Silva feels his stomach flip, and remains silent.

"You haven't killed him yet, have you?" She props a hand on her hip. With the scope in the way, he cannot read her so easily. He expects anger or passive resignation at either his failure or his excuses.

"No."

"You've been occupied, hmm?" A faint trace of amusement colors the words.

He drops his head. "I should've been strong enough to—"

"No, I shouldn't have left you on your own." She shakes her head, and looks out at the city, stretching before them in clouded pieces like an apparition. When she looks at the city and then looks at Silva, her expression does not change. "You were always strange."

He snorts, and they relax, and he fills Aster in on everything that has happened so far with regards to Xanthos.

"That's how he's maintained his cover here," he tells her. "He makes people think he is one of them—that they are seeing a close friend or acquaintance. Someone they know, someone with enough power or status that they don't question it."

"And your friends here, they have found him?" She sounds dubious.

"The people here know Nen, Aster," he says with a rush of excitement. "Without training or experience. It is so unlike anywhere else I have ever been. It is so unlike home. Everything about this place surprises me."

She gives him a pointed look that he ignores. "Are you sure," she says slowly, "that it is for precisely this reason that you have made no further effort to leave?"

He swallows, his voice thick in his throat. "It's not that."

The skepticism returns. "Are you sure? I came in with the trash this morning. It's been about..." She shrugs her shoulders, the scope blinking when it catches the light. "...Three hours? I've done reconnaissance, done a few exploratory passes of the tops of these buildings, all in Zetsu. I saw plenty. You know what I didn't see? You."

"I've been..." He stops, backtracks in his mind. Sighs once in a great exhale of breath. "It's complicated."

"Really?"

"Yes." She gives him a look. "Yes. Stop this, Aster. You sound like Dad."

A comparison to their father would ordinarily send her away fuming, but she merely props one hand on her hip and kicks at a stray piece of white marble.

"I know you. You're ashamed and then you ran away. I take some responsibility for that—I sent you here, after all—but I've had to deal with all of the blowout from the last mission and dealing with Dad's moods and organizing future jobs in your absence and I haven't been able to say no or turn away. I took the long way here alone not knowing what I would find. I'm the heir. I don't have the luxury of another choice."

Silva shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. Whenever their eyes meet, a twinge in his stomach causes him to look away. It is that very same shame that keeps him quiet now.

His eyes follow the designs in the cornice of the temple. There are things carved into the stone, things he couldn't have seen from so far away. Waves, creatures like dolphins and whales and sea urchins they could have no hope of ever seeing from here. Trees, beside them, and flowers, and elaborate scrollwork connecting the familiar shapes of televisions and trains and radio sets. Lines of dots and spirals that he thinks might be fireworks. All carved by human hands, with crude implements and limited skill, all likely added when the pieces were rebuilt.

"Listen," she continues. "It's fine. I don't care however you cope. But we need to move now. We need to find him and end this now."

"Yes," Silva answers quickly, snapping back into routine as though he is back in Padokia and not standing on top of a ruined castle a million miles away. He feels a million miles away, so far removed from the life he'd led in only a few short days. He'd thought he had no choice, too.

The hesitation comes after. Aster notices.

"What is it? Go and get your things, but be ready to leave."

His feet remain where they stand, although he casts one look back at the building he had just left, and the open window inside it.

"There are others...they could aid us." The words sound strange leaving his mouth, as clunky and out of place as he suddenly realizes the two of them are standing here. What good could they have done for him? And what good could he have done for them?

Aster scoffs. "With what? Just five minutes ago I watched two vagrants get into a fight over a single shoe they pulled from the trash—"

"They know Nen, Aster!" He repeats, trying once more to convey just how much that confirmation had meant to him. Something they had in common, he realizes. That was what it was about.

"And what can they do with it? Nothing. Things end up here for a reason. There's nothing here you can't get elsewhere, and better. And certainly nothing worth keeping."

"As you say." He pauses. "There's someone. I need to say goodbye."

She swivels to turn away from the city, and Silva gets a better look at the mechanisms of the conjured gun strapped to her broad shoulders. It seems to shift and shimmer even as he looks at it, like the ability is still settling into its acquired form.

"Make it quick," she says. "I order you to come with me. Anyone who can't keep up will be left behind."

"Yes, Aster." He cannot help the small, deferential nod to his elder sister of four years. Then he is off, leaping back across the chasm to alight onto the side of the building, hands clasped onto the rough cement walls above where the opening of the window into Kikyou's apartment is carved as though with clay. He flips his body up and through the window, landing silently on the rug. Kikyou stands with her back against the wall, and watches him for a few silent moments.

She begins. "That was—"

"My sister," he says at the same time. "My family."

"Your family means everything to you." She says it without a hint of malice, as straightforward as someone discussing the weather.

"It means that I have to leave," he tells her. "It means that I will likely not be coming back."

She squares her shoulders. "Take me with you."

"You can't keep up."

She tips her chin up. A beam of sunlight crosses her face, although her eyes are still as wide and dark as they've ever been. Those same dark eyes stare him down, now. "Try me."

"Your safety won't be guaranteed."

"It never was."

"Here or there."

"I don't want safe," she says, and steps forward, towards him. "I only want you."

It takes a moment for the words to truly register with him. He's never heard anything like them before, and now that he thinks of it he is not sure if he had ever expected he would. He drinks in the open affection on her face and their surroundings cease to matter; it is almost like he sees nothing else.

He doesn't know what he wants. Not really—there is his obligation to his family, the responsibility of his contracts, the goal of getting stronger. Those are not wants, and just as he had implied to Aster, they are not choices, either.

It helps, knowing what Kikyou wants. She has always been so determined, so focused. He does not recall, in the duration of their partnership, ever seeing her hesitate. She would not say such a thing if she did not mean it. And she has chosen him.

It occurs to him, then, that this is exactly what he wants. Choices.

"Follow me," he says to her, and leaves the room. Without another word or even so much as a backwards glance, Kikyou does.

Outside, they have only stepped a few paces away from the building before they are rushed by an impatient Gotoh. He runs towards them, out of breath, and blocks their path every time Silva tries to step around him.

"I've been waiting for you," he says, his boldness faltering slightly at the serious look on Silva's face. "It's important, you need to listen!"

"Whatever it is, you can—"

"No, wait, listen—"

A figure emerges from the other side of the tunnel, tall and white-haired and grim. Aster does not look at Gotoh or Kikyou, merely addresses Silva when she points into the heart of the city, towards the Mercato and the air wells.

"We'll start there. I will tear this city apart until I find him."

Gotoh stares up at Aster, then looks back at Silva, eyes squinting, then widening as he realizes the resemblance. At the attention, she spares him a brief but searching glance.

"Your eyes...can you read that number?" She points up, at a torn billboard tacked to the side of the building, advertising an action film from about ten years ago. "Does that seem fuzzy to you?"

He looks past her to the billboard. "What?"

"I suspected as much. You need glasses, kid."

He scrunches his nose. "...What?"

Silva sighs. "There's no time for this. Gotoh, we need to be on our way—"

Once more Gotoh moves to block his path, reaching out with both hands. "No, there's a convoy leaving Ryuuseigai this afternoon! I just heard about it and I came straight here to tell you."

"A convoy?" Kikyou asks.

"Just like last time," Gotoh says. "If the person you seek hid amongst them to enter the city, they might use it to leave. It's the only way they'd have access to a vehicle."

"Take us there." Aster's voice is like steel in a blizzard. "Take us there now."

He nods, his skinny legs carrying him away and they follow without another thought. The path Gotoh takes them is different from the way Kikyou might have—he avoids the main thoroughfares, and takes them through tunnels and alleyways that are so narrow or pitched in places that both Silva and Aster have to crouch to pass through. The only people they see on their journey are a few kids who back into the shadows at one stern glance from Aster and are gone a moment later.

Silva walks behind his elder sister, and Kikyou behind him, and the taps of her feet against the uneven metal floor and the slight pulse of her aura are a comfort to him as the walls curve inward and the light completely fades from the tunnels. When they finally emerge, a few minutes later, they are in a section of the city Silva has never seen before.

A large warehouse stands apart from the surrounding buildings, shaded by the fabricated skyscrapers, the ground between them all packed flat and crisscrossed with tire tracks. Gotoh leads them forward, his legs trembling.

"They cannot catch us," he says in a whisper.

A sudden curiosity makes him ask. "What would happen?"

Gotoh swallows. "It will be bad for us if they do."

The main doors of the hangar are on the opposite side of the building, although in places the ceiling and walls have been exposed, with cracks thin enough to see through but not wide enough to slip over. All Silva can make out are a few stacks of supplies—car batteries, jugs of oil and gasoline, tires stacked to the roof—but no vehicles are in sight.

Suddenly, Aster stands up straight. "His voice. I can hear it," she says.

Silva listens, but can make nothing out through the sudden roar of ignition.

"I heard it too," Kikyou says. "He was speaking to someone. I heard multiple voices."

"Maybe he was using his ability to make someone see him as an ally again," Silva says to Aster. "He's done it before."

"It would be good if we've gotten the most crippling effect out of the way," Aster muses, the gun on her back transforming, the barrel rotating to lock into place above her shoulder. They turn the corner of the building, a set of large double doors coming into view. "I will fire now."

Silva leaps back as a round of bullets burst from the end of her gun to punch through the corrugated metal walls of the warehouse. There is a shout from inside, and the roaring gets louder as without warning two vehicles burst through the doors, swerving as they try to avoid a second volley of shots. Aster is running a second later, long legs easily clearing the space between their group and the first car.

With the doors flung open, Silva can see that the inside of the warehouse is now empty. There is nowhere for anyone to hide, now that he has a better view of the space. There are no other vehicles, nothing to chase their quarry with.

The vehicles look like someone has taken an ATV and enhanced it with slanted panels on the sides and larger, more rugged tires. The framework has been adjusted, pieces clearly removed—Silva would not be surprised if the inside furnishings have been mostly stripped to save weight—and the sound from the engines is amplified in the confined space.

He runs, too, startled by a sudden cry from Kikyou. He glances back; her face has gone pale, and then her legs are moving, carrying her forward even as she struggles to keep up with them. Beyond the cluster of buildings is the open space of the desert, he knows. The cars will soon reach it, and then it will be that much harder to overtake them. It would be impossible without the aid of Nen.

Silva's senses sharpen as he engages his Gyo to watch more of Aster's Nen bullets ricochet off the framework of the lead vehicle.

"Aim for the tires!" he shouts, but then the car kicks up a cloud of dust and the entire bottom half of the vehicle is obscured. Aster leaps, her legs encased in Nen, and lands with a brutal thud atop the car.

Kikyou lags behind him. Silva raises an arm to shield his eyes as Aster sends a volley of bullets into the second car, causing it to swerve and slow against the loose dirt overpass to avoid the worst of the damage.

Kikyou rushes fearlessly ahead. He can see it with Gyo—watching the way she applies aura with uneven application to her feet, stumbling over one another even as she surges gracelessly forward.

As the car skids in an arc, Silva bends his knees and jumps, landing on the front hood of the vehicle. It swerves sharply to the right to try and throw him off, and he scrambles over the top, planting his feet solidly and holding on to the fins at the back to try and steady himself. Kikyou continues to run.

He considers punching through the metal shielding that covers the roof, but then the car revs the ignition, the wheels kicking up wide sprays of loose dirt as it pitches forward with a muffled roar. Silva nearly loses his footing, and glances ahead to see that the car carrying Aster is already far enough ahead to have reached the edge of the city limits.

"Silva!" Kikyou shouts to him, still running. The wheels continue to spin in the dirt, and Silva knows it is only a matter of time before it will pick up speed and she will have no hope of outrunning it.

He reaches for her. "You can make it! Take my hand!"

The car tilts to one side and Silva adjusts his balance. He breathes once. Has it only been a few seconds since the cars first appeared? It seems like so much longer, and yet—he watches as beyond the view of the warehouse, the rest of the city of Ryuuseigai seems to blend into the sharp monotonous gray of the sky. Kikyou calls his name again.

She reaches the second car, and holds out her hand for him.

He takes it, and with a grunt of effort lifts her up and holds her against him as the car weaves to try and throw them off.

"Wait!" a voice shouts. "Wait for me!"

Gotoh, his eyes wet with tears, lags far behind, stumbling over the uneven ground. He reaches out for them, his voice breaking.

"Take me with you! Don't leave me!"

The car drives forward, soaring now that the tires have found purchase. Gotoh stumbles again, and then falls to the ground. His eyes lock to Silva's.

"Don't leave me here!" he cries.

Silva says nothing back. If Aster had been right, perhaps even now he could no longer see the wavering sight of the car driving away. They vanish through the point of the last two ruined structures beyond the periphery of the city, and are gone.

Beside him, Kikyou grasps his arm. The vehicles, built for speed, race across the flat expanse. After a moment, the skyline of Ryuuseigai emerges more like a mirage than a portrait. He turns away, and focuses on the sight ahead.

Aster continues to fire into the top of the vehicle as best she can. The tires are covered at the top by a second shield of thick metal, and the car weaves back and forth as it leads the way across the desert. Silva does not want to risk flipping the car, and decides simply to hang on and wait for their next move. Either their targets will do something to change the advantage, or Aster will give him another order and he will have to obey. Until then, he allows Kikyou to cling to him and draw whatever meager comfort she can from his touch.

The view from the airplane had seemed similar to this. The ground is endlessly flat, the sky remarkably bleak, without cloud or hill in sight to disrupt it. Then he remembers Kikyou had spoken about a lake, and a mountain. He squints through the haze of midafternoon light. The sun sets early here, and he is unsure if what they are traveling towards is this place. He can see nothing against the sky. Ryuuseigai had appeared the same way—nearly invisible until one was almost on top of it. More tire tracks crisscross their own across the ground, hard and pitted. If it was true that more cars had come this way, it is likely that is where they are headed.

Aster does not know this. He has had no time to tell her anything. The sounds of more gunshots ricocheting off the roof echo in his ears. They are better than that child's cries.

"Silva." Kikyou repeats his name again, so softly that the wind swallows it up in an instant. He squeezes her arm in response. Fear and uncertainty roll off of her in waves. She breathes heavily, likely from having to maintain the Nen still circling her body in lagged spirals.

For a moment, there is only the emptiness of the wastelands around them and the sharp wind whipping across those same empty planes. Then, one of Aster's bullets finally manages to pierce through the metal protecting the interior of the car, and it swerves violently, flipping over and tumbling across a dune. Their own vehicle swings wide to avoid it, and with the added weight on the top of the car the wheels on the right side lift, the car balancing dangerously on the edge of turning over itself for a heartstopping moment before slamming back against a ridge of coarse sand.

"Aster!" Silva shouts, watching for any sign of her. The car rolls and rolls, and he watches Aster disappear underneath it before the entire sight is swallowed up by a haze of dust and debris. Then, he is almost thrown from the roof when their vehicle comes to a screeching halt.

Silva is prepared for anything, but not for a man dressed in the same ragged robes as many of the other Ryuuseigai residents to come barreling out of the passenger side of their car, running towards the wrecked vehicle and screaming into the wind.

"Elder!" the man cried out. "No, Elder!"

The toppled car's wheels spin aimlessly as it comes to a final rest against a bluff of sand. The frame is bent, the roof cracked, and Aster is nowhere to be found. Silva is ready to leap down after him, but then a figure emerges out of the tear in the roof. He has streaks of blood across his face, and his clothes are torn where they catch around the ragged bits of metal, but Silva recognizes the face of their target, Xanthos.

"Elder!" The new man continues to race towards him. There is movement in the sand below the car. Choking and gasping for air, Aster emerges, clutching the side of her arm. The gun strapped to her back has reverted in shape, minimized and reconstructed into a standard rifle.

A flash of confusion crosses her face as she watches the man run towards them. Then, Xanthos's arm swings down from where he crouches in the wreckage to slap his hand across the front of Aster's face. His palm covers her eyes, and when he pulls away, she blinks, her eyes unfocused.

The other man comes to a sudden stop. When he looks forward now, without the benefit of Xanthos's ability, it is clear he is seeing him for who he truly is.

His voice is wary. "...Elder?"

"This is not your Elder," Kikyou answers him. "This is a criminal."

"We've hunted him across three continents," Silva says, drawing his Nen into his hands. "I suggest you stay out of our way."

"I saw him...I saw him! He said we had to leave, that it was very important! I would never question one of the Elders!" The man continues to babble, staring wide-eyed even as Xanthos crawls out of the ruined car and drops to the ground beside Aster.

When she hears him land, even as muffled as the sound is against the sand, she strikes with a fury, launching a barrage of physical attacks.

"Aster!" Silva shouts to be heard. "What do you see?"

He holds his arm out for only a moment, directing Kikyou to stay back. The man from Ryuuseigai instead steps forward, and Silva refuses to put any more effort into his protection. If he dies, let it be on his own head.

"Silva?" She shouts, taking a few steps forward, glancing between where Silva stands and Xanthos, stumbling back against the dented metal of the wreckage.

When she speaks next, she sounds proud. "He's switched your faces, Silva! You look like him to me!" She swings out with one foot, and Xanthos leaps further back. "I won't fall for it!"

Silva runs forward, Nen wreathing his fists. His ability, the one Zeno had trained him to use, is still largely unproven. It takes tremendous energy to use, and is not yet very precise. He will not risk it until all other options have been extinguished.

The two siblings begin to fight, Silva charging into place and launching a series of punches against his foe. He remembers Xanthos had always been quick, quicker than anyone else he could remember fighting. He might even be a match for Zeno. As it is fighting Xanthos is almost more than the two of them can handle, even in their reduced states.

Every so often Aster hesitates, or pulls a punch meant for Xanthos—and what she sees when she looks at him must be Silva's own form, bloodied and battered. Every so often, he will pull back and she will fire with her rifle, the Nen-enhanced bullets nowhere near as strong as they would be in another form or if she had not already lost most of her strength. One of her arms is littered with deep wounds from the crash, and the entire length of her sleeve is stained with blood.

Xanthos himself staggers back from one of Silva's attacks, his own Nen shielding his body from the worst of the damage. Once more he assumes a fighting stance, telegraphing a punch, and Silva moves to counter it when the man from before—the man from Ryuuseigai—steps between them and offers up his own meager attack.

"This can not be allowed to continue! You must know my city will never allow—"

He does not even get to finish the sentence. Xanthos's attack is brutal and quick, and he snaps the man's neck in his hands with efficient practice. Silva can only stare at the senseless waste of life, and then in his distraction Xanthos claps both of his hands against the side of Silva's head, covering his ears, and Silva knows his ability has just found purchase.

"Silva!" Aster cries. He can still hear her, which is a good sign, but next he hears a woman's voice, a far-off scream, and he instinctively turns towards Kikyou, unable to corroborate the counterfeit sound from what he hears. It sounds so real—

Kikyou watches, safe, from the other side of the second car. Her face is pale, but she looks unharmed. Then, her already large eyes widen, and it is only the years of training and discipline that give Silva enough warning to duck his head and dodge what would have been a deadly hit.

He strikes back with a wide, sweeping kick, hoping to put more distance between them. Perhaps...perhaps now he can use the Dragon Lance. Perhaps it has come to this.

He increases the amount of Nen in his fists, and watches with grim satisfaction as Xanthos steps back. A few bullets hiss through the air above his left shoulder.

He plants himself solidly and calls to Aster. "I can only do this once, so drive him back against the car!"

More bullets follow, and he thinks he hears her agree with his plan. Then, her voice calls out to him, "Silva! Dodge left and let me take the offensive!"

Again, on instinct, he falls back, agreeing to her orders without question. When he does, he sees the shocked expression on Aster's face for only a moment before Xanthos rushes forward, driving her back across the open sand and towards the unblemished car.

"What are you doing?" He sees her mouth move at the same time he hears the words. His stomach sinks. Kikyou runs out from behind the car, looping around to the other side and backing up across the empty wilderness.

Now, with Xanthos between them, Aster cannot just freely shoot without consequence. He can see how tired she looks, and knows that there will come a time when she is not able to conjure any ammunition at all.

He hears another scream, and his blood goes cold.

It's a familiar sound—not meant to distract, but to taunt. He remembers it well. It's Kosmos's voice, screaming at him for help, and Silva forgets his training and his caution and charges forward, hands shrouded with steadily growing purple energy, and attempts to claw Xanthos to ribbons.

His every attack is met with a brisk retreat, Xanthos's incredible speed outpacing even his most aggressive tactics. A wide-range ability like his Dragon Lance is the only option remaining, and he can feel the aura continuing to build. Without an outlet, it will burn itself out before he can even use it.

Aster goes to reload her gun, sliding the mechanism into place, and is met with a hollow click. She pulls the weapon around her shoulders instead, switching to physical attacks, more blood dripping from her damaged arm. When Xanthos charges her, she meets him head-on, grasping his arms and attempting to grapple him.

Silva knows his sister's incredible strength. In peak form it would have been no problem to hold him still for as long as she needed. But now, sweat beads across her forehead and a pained growl is torn from her throat after only a moment of effort.

"Attack him!" she shouts, and Silva considers it a bleak blessing that he can even hear her at all. "Just do it! Even if it kills me, do not let go!"

Silva's arms shake from the effort of holding back his ability. His eyes catch Aster's, and he sees with horror that she means what she says. That she has every intention of dying here, in this way, if it means she can take their target down with her.

"I've given you an order! Kill him now!"

He allows himself no further hesitation. Without another word, he pushes his hands forward, fingers hooked like claws, and allows his Nen to climb around his arms and wreath his hands as it begins to form into scales and coils. When his Nen takes shape, it is as the body of a dragon.

"Dragon Lance!" He shouts as he releases his Nen.

A surge of purple aura surges forth, enveloping the entire section of desert in an impossibly bright purple light. It scorches the sand, blackening and warping the metal of the second car, and drives home into Xanthos's body with an anguished scream.

Silva holds the attack as long as he can. When the light finally dies, he remains standing where he is, hands outstretched, palms together, fingers shaking.

On the ground, the bodies of Aster and Xanthos are no more than burned husks against the darkened sand. Their images have been burned into the side of the car, the scorch marks of two bodies the only part of it still intact. At last, he lowers his hands.

Silva Zoldyck stands there and weeps.

After a moment, he can feel arms come around him to circle his waist. Kikyou presses the side of her head into his back and simply holds him as he mourns.

"My sister." His voice sounds foreign to his ears, even though he knows the ability is long faded. "My family..."

"We'll build a new one," she says. "You have me, now."

He cannot do anything about the bodies. He cannot even use the other car, now that it's been ruined too. He swallows and looks away, at the flat expanse of nothingness stretching for miles beyond, and fixates on a smudge he thinks he sees against the sky, some miles out.

"What is that?" Kikyou asks. He turns back to her. She's focused on something, down by the bodies.

"There is something else," she says, bending down to look. "Here, in the sand."

Silva makes no move to grasp it. Instead, it is Kikyou who lifts the scope Aster had worn from where it sits on the ground. The black plastic pulses with warmth but does not move, its shape fixed.

"What should we do with it?" she asks.

"I don't know," is all he can answer. "What do you want to do?"

Frowning softly, she lifts the scope to her eyes. Now the apparatus moves, shifting and changing until it wraps completely around the sides of her face. She gasps, lifting a hand in front of her face. What she sees must not shock her, because a surprised smile begins to tug at her mouth.

Kikyou blinks and looks around.

From the front, Silva only sees a thin red dot across the visor where previously her eyes would be.

"It's magnificent," she says, her voice breathy. "Silva, you should see how you look."

He reaches for her, and tugs her into his arms, and for a moment that is enough. Then, the reality of their situation sets in, and he asks himself what Aster would have done.

There are remnants of old tire tracks, crisscrossing across the hard-packed sand. "We should travel this way," he says, grasping one of Kikyou's hands in his. "You mentioned a lake, earlier. I think the path leads there. I think I saw a mountain, earlier. That is where we should go."

She defers to him without complaint, and together the two of them take their first steps across the empty desert and away from the remains of the battle.

They travel without a word. They do not stop, not for rest or for surveying. After another mile, the image of a mountain, faint against the gray sky, begins to emerge, pale and magnificent against the empty wasteland. After an hour of walking, the sun begins to set against their backs, and they finally reach the shores of a silver lake as the last brilliant rays cut through the sky to turn the world to orange fire.

Kikyou drops to the lake's edge, eagerly cupping water in her palms and bringing it to her mouth. Silva does the same—it is chalky and unpleasantly smooth.

Like Kikyou had told him before, there is a small shack adjacent to the lake where Ryuuseigai citizens come to collect and transfer the water. Inside, Silva finds supplies. Thinking of Kikyou, he pens a brief letter, stating everything he knows about his target's transgressions against Meteor City, and where they might find evidence of his demise. Then, collecting a small glass vessel, he returns to the water's edge.

"Hey." He crouches down beside her, where Kikyou is continuing to drink her fill.

"I want you to do something for me," he says, and fills the cup with water. Plucking a small leaf from one of the plants that grows along the water's edge, he places it in the center of the cup.

"This will tell you all about your Nen type," he tells her, then guides her hands around the rim of the cup. "Just focus."

The leaf begins to move, swaying first to one side of the glass, and then the other. He glances at Kikyou, finding the red laser of her visor moving vividly at every movement.

"Manipulation type," he says, and when she pulls away an idea occurs to him.

Folding his hands on either side of the vessel, he begins to focus his aura. She watches him, blinking, as after a moment nothing seems to happen. "What did you do?" she asks.

Dipping a finger into the water, he brings it to his mouth.

"Hmm." The water is sweet. "Taste it and see for yourself."

She plucks out the leaf and brings the glass to her mouth. With clear surprise, she gasps her approval and continues to drink.

There had been additional vehicles stored in the shack, alongside a number of communication devices, all fully charged. It would be an easy thing for them to return to some semblance of civilization. He looks at the woman beside him. It would be so easy to bring her with him.

Zeno would absolutely hate it. This, for more than any other reason, firms his resolve to do it.

When Kikyou fills up a second glass and brings it to him to prepare in the same way, she offers him the first drink. He takes it without objection. And when he offers her his hand once more, she takes it and rises with him.

Gotoh crosses the ridge of the garbage heap, stumbling over a row of remarkably intact packaging containers. He'd found a few good dishes earlier, and these would go to a few of Kikyou's old clients. He stumbles over a pallet of old newspapers—and aren't those useless, but they make for good kindling—and is about to cross another ridge when he stops at a bottle, half poking out of the debris.

It's large and ornate and completely unbroken. But what catches his attention is the name scrawled across the side in black marker.

GOTOH

He plucks it free and shakes it. There appears to be something inside, and it takes a few minutes of fiddling with the opening before he can get it loose.

A curved piece of paper falls into his hands first.

He turns it over. There is an image, a photograph, of Silva and Kikyou and a few others Gotoh doesn't recognize. They are dressed in formal clothes, nicer than anything he's ever seen. Silva's arms are around Kikyou, her stomach visibly round.

The back of the photograph has writing on it. To my friend, the first sentence reads.

I cannot thank you enough for all that you have done for me. While I regret I had to leave you behind, I hope I can begin to make up for it with these gifts.

Gifts? Gotoh lifts the bottle and peers inside. There is something else inside, whatever had been rattling around in there earlier. He tilts the bottle and fishes it out.

A folded pair of spectacles lands in his palm. He stares at the gift, speechless, before unfolding the arms and sliding them onto his face. They sit comfortably on the bridge of his nose, and when he looks now across the mounds of trash and the rising skyscrapers before him, he can see them all in perfect clarity.

There was one final line to the message, written in Kikyou's hand.

I will be back for you when I can. You have only to wait.