[fic] [yst] At the Stars 14/?

[morphaileffect]

WEIRD SCIENCE AND EMO BEYOND THIS POINT.



At the Stars
Part 14

"Remember"... such a simple word, and yet so heavy. Ryo bore it on his back as he drove to where Touma waited, many miles out of the city.

It was going to be several hours' drive. Touma had given him directions to a forest near a coastal village - an isolated place that a medical doctor probably wouldn't want to set up a laboratory in, for lack of access to equipment and supplies.

Ryo knew well enough that he wasn't going to some secret lab Touma had somehow set up. But he didn't know what else to expect.

He had plenty of time to think, and so he thought back to the things Seiji had said yesterday. One of them was this:

"On the day I got back from the hospital, I had a dream. I dreamed my story was finished. And that the strategist was able to rescue the general safely and they both went back to their friends and everyone lived happily ever after.

"But I felt very strongly that it wasn't right. It wasn't their ending. And when I woke up, all I knew was that I had to talk to Touma. I had to tell him it wasn't supposed to end that way. That was why I was going to kill myself trying to reach the phone." Seiji had laughed bitterly. "But looking back... that would've been a funny thing to say to him, wouldn't it?"

Seiji was sad. It was a weird thing to be right after experiencing a miracle. But Ryo didn't hold it against him, as he wasn't the one the miracle had happened to, and he was in no position to judge whatever Seiji was going through.

"I messed up," he confided, "with Touma. You know that before he met us, he never even thought he needed friends. He thought he was going to be perfectly fine, going through life envied and hated for being smarter than everyone else. But when he got friends, he realized it wasn't enough to just be smarter than everyone else. It was a good thing that he met us." Seiji looked away. "But it wasn't a good thing that I kissed him. I realized that too late. He was ready to go through life without ever knowing love. I made a mistake."

Ryo didn't understand. Why is falling in love ever a mistake?

Love changes you, Seiji explained, in ways you never expect. It reminds you of everyone who's ever hurt you, and everything you've ever felt for anyone else, and bundles all these wicked emotions up into just one person. It teaches you how deeply you can feel and how much you can sacrifice for the sake of that person - and sometimes you realize there is no end to how deeply you can feel and how much you can sacrifice, and it scares you.

Ryo listened to his more eloquent friend, because there was no other way for him to know. He wasn't sure he had ever been in love in the way Seiji described - he made it sound a little like torture.

Ryo has certainly felt like he could die for his friends, in fact for the whole damn world, but when things came down to it, he didn't find it scary. Not one bit.

And he might have felt differently toward one or two special people in his life, but the love he felt for them never felt like that - and maybe it would never feel like that, ever. The thought made Ryo a little sad... especially when he thought that his dearest friends had experienced it. Seiji had experienced it enough to describe it in such vivid terms, certainly - and if he was to be believed, Touma had experienced it, too. Was experiencing it still.

"He's too young. We forget that he's the youngest of us. His feelings have changed him. He no longer listens. He's becoming less and less like the Touma we know."

It made Touma's behavior make a lot of sense. Used to be, he was the one level-headed enough to tell others when they were behaving like jackasses. Now it was as if he had an impenetrable wall around him that made it impossible for anyone else to tell him he was being a jackass.

"I'm sorry. For everything. Will you, at least, forgive me?"

Ryo would do no such thing. He was in no position to do so. He asked instead, Why do you blame yourself? Did you want all this to happen? Don't you love him back?

Seiji smiled sadly. "I do," he readily answered. "That's why I can't forgive myself."

Ryo may not have expected a lab, but he certainly wasn't expecting a cave. It was a natural cave, with a narrow unimpressive entrance; anyone could easily miss it passing by.

Though it wasn't as if many people would pass by. There were no paved roads leading to it; Ryo had to park Shin's car at the entrance of a forest and walk a good distance toward the cave. He thought it was weird for a forest: no birds, no small animals, and it didn't seem as if there had been any for some time.

This wasn't good news: no one is ever up to anything lawful in a cave. Smugglers and pirates and kidnappers use caves.

Touma was waiting at the entrance, arms folded across his chest and leaning back against the rock. He wore a button-down shirt and denim jeans - clothes that he'd bought during their last trip downtown, Ryo recognized. His shoulders were hunched slightly, as they would on someone who had been bent over something for far too long. He needed a shave, a meal and maybe a good night's sleep. Or several.

"Am I late?" Ryo hadn't meant that to sound as dry as it did.

Touma simply turned and walked into the tunnel weather-carved into rock. "Follow me," he said. Ryo obliged without complaint.

It wasn't a long walk. The tunnel was unremarkable.

It was what was at the end of it that took Ryo's breath away.

There was a circular machine big enough to fill the room. It was built like a computer with its guts torn out: all wires, nuts and bolts, and pieces of metal haphazardly welded together. One could even see the electric currents running from one node to another - it looked unsafe to even be near.

Various tools and bits of metal were scattered all over the cavern floor; whoever had been busy with this machine didn't have the time or the inclination to clean up.

The most noticeable feature of the machine was not its size, however, but the five balls of bright light that mystically hovered over crude dishlike receptacles. They seemed out of place on such a modern aberration, and Ryo could almost swear they didn't belong there, except he'd seen his share of strange things in his life...

There were incandescent lamps set up all around the rock, but most of the light in the cavern came from the machine itself - specifically, the five balls of light, which glowed red, blue, light blue, green and orange. Though the balls of light were all perfect spheres of the same size, they weren't similar in brightness. The light blue one was very dim, while the green one seemed to flicker. The red, orange and blue ones shone at about the same strength.

Ryo looked over at Touma. There was no expression on his face save for weariness while he looked at the machine. His hands lay at his sides and it was only then Ryo noticed that they were shaking slightly, stained with grease and other chemicals.

"Touma, what is this," Ryo demanded. His voice was soft with wonder and dread. "What's going on?"

Touma left his side and moved closer to the machine, rested one trembling hand on a panel. Then he turned and faced Ryo.

"This," he said without pride, without any other emotion, "is us."

The explanation was simple, Touma began:

A decade ago, Touma found a manuscript left behind by Yagyuu Nasuti's grandfather, which spoke of a way for humans to harness youja energy. The writing was mostly theoretical, offering no practical answers, saying only that as long as there was energy from the youjakai wandering around in the world of humans, there was sure to be a way to manipulate it.

However, the procedure would require extreme precision and a great deal of time to perfect. And should anyone attempt it with currently existing technologies, it was likely to emerge unstable.

Like many of the things Touma had read at the Yagyuu household, he'd committed it to memory, not even knowing at the time that it would ever be useful. It was just an interesting read then, something with which to pass the time. But it had been several years since, and many of the things that were technologically impossible then, could be accomplished now.

It was a long shot and Touma hadn't wanted to consider it, but he had stopped making progress on his research on Seiji's illness. It started to look more and more like an alternative... and then the final blow came when he lost the job that gave him access to all the medical equipment and materials he needed.

Then it became the only way.

There were no more youja in the human world, and the gates between worlds had been sealed shut. Opening another door was a task that went beyond even Touma's abilities. But there was a supply of youja energy in the human world, even if it didn't come from the monsters the boys had to fight back when they were Troopers: it came from the Troopers themselves.

Even with the armor gone, they still had youja within them, similar to a power source. Or, more appropriately: a life force. It continued to set the five of them apart from the rest of the human race, although it had been all but rendered useless because of the disappearance of the armor -

It lay inside each of them, dormant, waiting to be tapped.

"We were born with youja energy," Touma explained, "it's tied to our life force. That was why only we could wield the armor, and no one else, not even people from our own families. It was a matter of birthright, though not simply a matter of blood.

"And what do you think happens, Ryo, when we die? When our life force is depleted - where does all the youja energy go?"

Ryo shook his head. "How would I know?" was his retort.

"It leaves our bodies," Touma answered flatly. "And then it hangs in the air, waiting for the next person who will be born with the ability to receive it. Like all forms of energy, it can't be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred or converted. Do you understand? It means that like any form of energy, the youja energy inside us can be captured, manipulated and contained. And I've found a way to do it." He placed his hand on another panel. "This machine... that's what it does. It collects, transfers and converts energy. Our energy."

Ryo searched Touma's face for signs of this being an elaborate prank - he felt like he had been doing this since he came, hoping it was all as unreal as it should have been. Tell me this is as ridiculous as it sounds, he hoped. Tell me I'm too stupid to get the joke.

"You're saying," Ryo said tentatively, "you've found a way to take the energy inside our bodies... and transfer it. To where? Into the machine?"

"Not the machine," Touma gravely relayed, "There are no other vessels that can handle youja energy on this earth, only our bodies. Artifacts like our armor would take ages and expertise to do - expertise that I'll admit I don't have." Ryo found that hard to believe; if Touma could build a machine that could take out energy from living bodies and put them into other living bodies, chances were he already had the required "expertise" in spades.

Touma came clean about one other thing: as soon as he got the prototype up and working, he had tried it on Shuu. He was confident that Shuu's life force was strong enough to withstand a test run (as much as he had wanted to, he couldn't try it on himself, because he needed to be in good condition to perform the experiments). But once Shuu confirmed his theories, on that day when he failed to visit Seiji at the hospital because he suddenly and mysteriously "got sick," Touma knew his prototype was functional. And that with some fine-tuning, any one of them could transfer their life force into Seiji and back.

What he did not count on, however, was how returning the life force to the original owner made Seiji even weaker. When Shuu's life force was returned to him, Seiji ceased being able to walk. It made no sense. How come Seiji couldn't just stay well, how come it seemed as if Seiji gave up more of his energy every time the process reversed?

But even if it didn't make sense, Touma understood one thing: he'd taken too much from Shin to make Seiji "well" again, and he couldn't give that energy back without putting too much strain on Seiji. Until a solution was worked out, Shin would have to remain in a coma, his life force kept to a bare minimum. No medical procedure would be able to revive him, just as no medical procedure in the world could have possibly cured Seiji's illness - his life force would need to be returned to him via the machine.

And Touma had already worked out the solution. He knew exactly what had to be done to make things right, or so he told Ryo.

At any point, Ryo could've tried to knock Touma out, drag him all the way back to Shin's car, and drive back to Tokyo. Or he could've found a bunch of loose cables, tied Touma up, hitched him over his shoulder, and carried him all the way home, kicking and screaming, so he could face Seiji and Shuu and whoever else might be able to make him see reason. That might have solved matters. In fact, that was Ryo's first impulse.

But he knew that acting on impulse would place him at a disadvantage with Touma. Knowing Touma, he would have already thought at least two moves ahead. If this Touma were backed against the wall any further, Ryo didn't doubt Touma would put up a fight, and maybe even overpower him. And then where would that leave them both?

Touma had already built this thing, this monstrous device that played with lives, and Ryo needed to figure out what was to be done with it. He doubted very much that the use of force would make for a positive outcome in this situation.

(Touma had said something about their life forces leaving their bodies to "hang in the air" after they were dead - if this machine were destroyed, would the same thing happen?)

This was what Touma had called him down for: he needed someone to operate the machine while he went back to Seiji. He had to show himself to Seiji, let Seiji know everything was all right.

In the meantime, there were certain instructions to follow.

"I'll be leaving my mobile with you. When you get my call, just press the button below the blue sphere." Touma gestured to the said button. It was comically huge, Ryo would have to have been an imbecile to miss it. There was one for each receptacle beneath each sphere. "The blue sphere will fade out, and the green and light blue spheres will light up. It'll take some time, maybe over 30 minutes, before the blue sphere fades out completely, and color is restored to the green and light blue spheres.

"You'll notice that the light blue sphere will reach maximum brightness very quickly. This is Shin's sphere, and all his original energy will be restored. In the meantime, the blue sphere will start fading, and the green sphere, Seiji's, will start growing brighter."

The blue sphere was Touma's - that much Ryo worked out. And the red one was his, and the orange one Shuu's. It was a comfortable pattern, though he did find it quaint that it hadn't changed in all this time.

"Don't do anything else after that," Touma stressed. "The blue sphere has to discharge completely. That's the only time youja energy will be trapped within the green sphere - and presumably, that is when the green sphere will start being able to function on its own."

"What happens if I do anything else?" Ryo asked. "Like press the button a second time?"

"The process will be stalled. I'll slip into a coma, like Shin." Touma was straightforward, clinical, as he said this. "I'd be fine with that, if I were only sure it would be enough to recharge the green sphere. But it's not, as you've seen in Shin's case. Another sphere has to be completely drained for that to happen."

"But if the blue sphere is completely drained... what's going to happen to you?"

Ryo already knew the answer. He just needed to hear it from Touma. More than that, he wanted to know if Touma was going to lie.

Touma didn't lie. In fact, he didn't answer. He walked around to the other side of the machine, casually tinkered with a panel he'd installed there.

"The important thing is, the green sphere will have its own light again," Touma eventually said. "Seiji will be brought back to perfect health."

"Are you insane?!"

He circled the machine to get to Touma, and Touma made no move to flee.

"What about your parents? Your research? Touma - you're young! You can do so much!" He seized Touma by the shoulders. "Seiji's not all you've got to live for!"

Touma looked at him without seeing him. It seemed to be the only way for him to look Ryo in the eye directly.

He pulled away.

"I want you to know something, Ryo," he said in a firm voice, "I messed up. I don't even know where to start telling you about the crazy things I've done." Sounding fiercer, angry almost, he proceeded to ask, "If I said I'd killed someone just so I could keep on the way I did, would you believe me?"

This wasn't a confession. This was a challenge. Touma continued to look at him, tense as if anticipating the fall of some invisible axe.

But Ryo wasn't about to play into this.

"No," he said with absolute conviction. "You wouldn't. Kill anyone. Not intentionally."

But even as he said this he found himself looking back... and his thoughts led him to the time when Touma came home late one night bruised and bleeding, claiming that he was in a car accident. Ryo thought at the time that it was safe to attribute it to the shock of having Seiji almost die, but things became different; Touma became noticeably more distant, more taciturn, more serious.

What was that night all about, after all? And all those other times when Touma left?

What Ryo said made Touma visibly relax, though he looked no happier. "That answer," he said miserably, "is why people like me don't deserve friends like you."

Ryo took a step forward, suddenly torn between wanting to throw his arms around his distressed friend and wanting to whack same friend upside the head.

"Touma," he pronounced, "I don't care right now about the things you've done. We can't do anything to change them anymore. What matters is what you're planning to do next." He stepped closer. "Seiji wouldn't want to be well again... not at that cost."

"That's why we'll never tell him."

Ryo sighed loudly. He obviously wasn't going to win this argument, but damned if he was going to lose his temper at least.

"Ryo... think of Shin." Touma wasn't going to let up, either. "If you don't do it, he's going to remain unconscious. The longer you wait, the weaker his body becomes. And should you choose to bring Shin back without draining another person's sphere, Seiji's condition is going to get worse. Much worse. Do you want that on your conscience?"

Ryo came to a full stop. Before now he'd been completely convinced that he was doing the right thing - would continue to do the right thing until the very end, at least for his friends.

Now Touma was placing the life of a friend which he stole in Ryo's hands. And Ryo was suddenly responsible for it.

This was wrong. Wrong and horrible.

"Why is the only way to recharge the green sphere, to completely drain another?" Ryo demanded. "Isn't there a way to take a little from all of us, all at once?"

Touma shook his head. "This machine can only drain one sphere at a time. I've tried taking a little from each sphere all at once, and it's just not possible. Maybe if I have more time..."

"We'll get time." He had to sound like he believed himself. "As much as you need."

"Time," Touma echoed with a bleak chuckle, as if uttering the name of his worst enemy. "If I really had all the time I needed, I wouldn't have resorted to this."

Touma stepped up closer to Ryo. He laid a shaking hand on Ryo's cheek, and Ryo stood still, amazed at how warm it turned out to be.

"Ryo. This is the last thing I will ever ask of you. Give me this."

Ryo found it unsettling, walking with a childhood friend in a place far from civilization, discussing matters of life and death, and weird science that should've gone way over his head.

But he understood Touma's explanation. Only too well. There were only a few important things he didn't get.

"Why did it have to be Shin?" he asked quietly.

Touma closed his eyes and did not reply for the longest time. At first Ryo thought he was going to stay that way until they got back to the car.

"Shin would understand," Touma eventually said in monotone. "If I'd told him about it, and asked him if he was willing to go through with it, for Seiji's sake - he would've said yes."

This reply angered Ryo. Of all of them, Shin was the one who trusted the most. Shin was the one who gave the most. That was Shin's way.

Touma made it sound like he was aware of this, but took advantage of it anyway.

"Any one of us would have said yes," Ryo argued. "I would've said yes, Touma! Why couldn't it have been me?"

"It couldn't have been you." Touma muttered.

"Why not??" his voice was raised.

"Because Seiji likes you!"

Touma's voice rang throughout the silent forest, louder than anything, louder even than the rush of anger that throbbed in Ryo's ears.

Ryo stood dumbfounded.

Touma's shoulders slouched again, making him look smaller, more defenseless.

"He's always liked you," Touma said in a low voice again. "From the start."

Saying this seemed to sap the strength from his knees. Touma staggered, and Ryo caught him before he lost his balance altogether. On impulse Touma's hands shot up to grab his friend's shoulders. The next action of pushing Ryo away had no force behind it, and meant nothing.

Ryo pulled Touma close to steady him. Touma was shaking slightly in his embrace. His weight kept Ryo from dragging them both back to their feet.

"Why do you think I even called you?" Touma continued weakly, close to Ryo's ear. "I knew you were going to offer to stay and help, and I knew Seiji was going to hate me if I let you. The last thing he wanted was for you to see him helpless. All he ever wanted was to be beside you, protecting you. It was - " He swallowed. It was an effort for him to speak. "It was why he agreed to live in with me. Because I promised I was going to make him better. Good as new."

Touma's voice had turned ragged. This meant he was trying not to cry. Ryo knew it well, but had never heard it on Touma, not even when they were children and tears came more easily.

"Besides," Touma continued, "you being there worked out for everyone, didn't it? Whether I failed or succeeded, you were there. He could spend more time with you. Just like he always wanted."

"But Seiji doesn't..." He held Touma at arm's length. He hadn't counted on sounding so gentle. Maybe gentleness was not what was needed right now. "How do you even know? Have you asked him?"

"I don't have to. I worked it out long ago." Touma smiled at him, with a rare fondness. "You really are a complete idiot, aren't you? All those books, all that stuff he's written - they were all letters, addressed to you."

"That's not true."

But even as Ryo said it, he knew it was useless. Even with a shaking voice, Touma spoke with the certainty of someone who had hidden a secret for far too long, and was finally being hollowed out.

"Touma. Seiji likes you. You've lived with him for years. Don't you even know that one simple thing?"

The closer the distance, the harder it was for Touma to look Ryo in the eye. It had been like that for a while, Ryo realized - it had been this way between them for the last five years.

"It doesn't matter," Touma said emptily. "This is as much as I can do for him. After this, I can get out of everybody's hair. But you..." Then he smiled. It came to Ryo that he had not seen Touma smile in a very long time. "You can make him happy. Happier than I've ever made him. I'm sure of that, at least."

"Stop," Ryo said feebly. He rose to his feet, lifting Touma to his. He slung one of Touma's arms over his shoulders so he could carry him more easily.

"You're that kind, Ryo," Touma kept on saying. "Anyone would be happy with you."

The rest of the way was long and torturous. Touma weighed on him like a suit of armor, one he never remembered being that heavy before.

You just need to rest, he kept telling Touma. You haven't eaten or slept in days, have you? I'm taking you home, and that's the end of it. You're going to get all the rest you need, and we're going to forget all about this machine, because there's a way to fix everything without this machine, and we're going to find it.

Touma said nothing. Not for the first time that day, Ryo felt like he wasn't even listening.

When they got back to the car, Touma spent his remaining strength eating and drinking the emergency supplies stashed away in Shin's car. Shin kept a box of biscuits and an unopened bottle of distilled water in the glove compartment, which Ryo thought were charming but useless until they suddenly seemed able to save someone's life.

Then Touma slept. There wasn't even a warning. He sat on the ground with his back against the flank of the car, closed his eyes and drifted off.

And given that Touma slept like the dead, Ryo knew that at this point he could have picked his friend up, thrown him into the backseat, and driven off, all without a fuss.

But he didn't.

He wasn't sure why. A part of him still nagged that it was a good idea. And wasn't that what Seiji had asked him to do - not what Touma wanted, but the right thing?

Maybe too many things, too many people have "messed up," including him.

At the time it just felt more right to sit here, keeping watch over his vulnerable friend, while stars began to appear in the night sky.

As the darkness grew, the stars grew brighter. The night chill was making its presence known as well. Ryo found himself being beset with memories, like the nights he and Touma and Seiji sat outside at the balcony with the telescope, and the way the stars over the city looked outside the window of the room that Touma and Seiji shared.

But most of all, he remembered the lanky teenage boy who for some weird reason liked spending his nights in treetops and rooftops and high places, who watched the stars with such pure joy. The boy who never turned him away even when Ryo insisted on his presence during those moments of communion, even when Ryo knew he preferred to be alone.

He remembered how being around the boy made him feel: young and dumb and in awe. Except when the boy was being stupid, which was always a pleasant reminder that they were almost the same age. The boy could do maths in his head faster than any calculator, yet he couldn't work out why a girl he was trying to take out for drinks would be upset with him just because he said she was buying. The boy could defeat hordes of youja on his own, but couldn't be bothered to learn how to sew a button back onto a shirt without mangling his fingers.

That proud, lonely boy would not have lied for his own convenience. Would not have sacrificed any of his friends for anything.

That boy would never have played with lives, even if he could.

However, that boy was far away now.

And maybe he was never coming back.

When Touma woke up, he was still in a sort of daze. He only realized it was nighttime; he didn't notice the stars overhead.

"I have to go," was the first thing he said.

Ryo nodded. He gave up the keys to the car readily. In exchange, Touma handed him a cellular phone he had been keeping in his pocket.

"Give me a day," he said to Ryo. "I'll call you when I'm ready, but I won't take longer than a day, I promise."

It was Ryo's turn to say nothing. Touma repeated his instructions about the machine, issued a few warnings which frankly went in one ear and out the other. Ryo had heard just about enough about how risky this whole ordeal was and how important it was that he did exactly as he was told.

He knew exactly what he was taking upon himself.

As Touma was starting the car, he called, "Ryo."

Ryo looked at him.

"Thank you for everything. And... I'm sorry."

Apologies still sounded weird coming from Touma, after all these years.

Ryo smiled. "Just go."

Touma stayed for a moment, staring at that smile as if he couldn't accept that it was meant for him.

Then he drove off.

In the end, Touma couldn't believe how easy it all went. Ryo was never one for doing things without question, and though weak with hunger and sleeplessness, Touma had been fully prepared for a fight.

It was useless to think of how else things could have gone. Or what could have been going through Ryo's head, for him to have given in so easily. Touma knew he should be glad things went smoothly; there were a number of ways Ryo could have processed the information he had just been given, but in the end his gamble on his friend's compassionate nature paid off.

It was the last time he and Ryo were ever to meet. It was more than enough that they did not part as enemies, though Touma knew he had left his friend with an unspeakable burden and shattered faith. That smile accused him of so many things.

It did not matter.

He felt numb inside. Cold. But maybe it was just because sleep was still leaving him. He was still half in a haze as he drove off, grateful that the long road back to Tokyo was at least well-lit by the cloudless evening sky.

"Good as new, Seiji," he said softly to no one.

(tbc)