''Speak''
'Thought'
____________________________________________
"Interested now, ain't you?" The Ancient One said, "But what do you want to explain? I bet you have many questions in your head right now."
"You said you can't observe me because of Rashomon, but you seem to know much about how my Rashomon work," Ryu said before looking at his hand, seemingly quite transparent.
"Well, I did not lie when I said that I can see or predict your move because of Rashomon; that also includes your companion that seems to be obscure by Rashomon's aura, but at the same time, it's pretty hard to miss about what happened 19 years ago. The fight between your group and the X-men. Quite a spectacle that it's become quite hard to miss." The Ancient One explain
"When I observe your fight, your power, Rashomon was quite fascinating. The amount of adaptability it has and how fast it adapts is genuinely out of this world. There seems to be more with your power than meets the eyes.
After all, have you ever considered how something like Rashomon can have a mind of its own? Have you ever thought about how it is possible for the power that comes from genetic mutation to have its sense of its own, like a second being?"
"So what? My Rashomon has a mind of its own, and why does it matter? I'm still the one who is controlling it." Ryu answer back
"Indeed, you are controlling it, or are you?" The Ancient One asks," Whether or not you are the one controlling Rashomon, or if Rashomon itself is allowing you to own it, you genuinely don't it do you?"
"What?" Ryu cannot help but mutter and look wide eyes at the Ancient One, "That... not possible. It is just a power I have; all it did was protect me and help me come out on top in a bad situation."
"Yes, I cannot argue that Rashomon had been helping you for a long time. The only reason it protects you is that if you died, Rashomon itself would also disappear.
Your power Rashomon is evolving at a constant, frightening rate. The more you use it, the more powerful it becomes. Think about it, for the last 19 years; you barely used your Rashomon because of your constant moving; compared to how much you used in a single day back when you were fighting, its growth had been slowed considerably.
Just like a living thing, Rashomon keeps feeding and growing, and it forever keeps changing. But it truly has no never stopped growing and evolving. Have you thought about how far Rashomon could go if you used it constantly?"
"And what of it?" Ryu immediately snapped back toward Ancient One. "So what if my Rashomon constantly growing? What's wrong with that?"
"There is nothing wrong with that per se. Well, nothing wrong with it yet." The Ancient One said before, with a strange hand movement, she created what seemed to be another screen that was made out of magic.
"I have been wondering, what happens if your Rashomon keeps growing? What would it be like, so using my power with assistance from a certain stone, I was able to look into as many possibilities of the future as many as possible. And do you know what I see when I look at the Earth's future in the next twenty years?" The Ancient One said, and she continued without even waiting for Ryu's answer.
"I see nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Yes, nothing. As in, there is no Earth in the future and no Earth in this solar system." The Ancient One said while showing the planet Earth's screen before it suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but the blackness of space.
"And you know what is more interesting or concerning more concerning. Before the Earth, something else disappeared first, and you know what that is?" The Ancient One asks the rhetorical question before showing a red planet on the screen.
"This is Mars, one of the planets in our solar system, also suddenly disappearing." The Ancient One explain
"No matter how hard I try, I can never find out what truly caused all of this, and it seems like something is preventing me from seeing the cause of this. Until I realised there was something in this world that had similar power that I couldn't observe. You know what I'm talking about, right?"
Ryu stays silent for a few seconds before answering, "My Rashomon..."
"Correct. I do not know how, but I conclude that your Rashomon is the cause of the disappearance or maybe the destruction of these planets; not only that, your Rashomon aura seems to get stronger and stronger, and I can only see a few possibilities of the future.
Meaning that the future I see might be the worst possible future that will happen, or maybe..."
"It's the best possible future." Ryu finish Ancient One sentence
"You are indeed correct again. This brings us back to the reason we are having this conversation in the first place. I suspect that the destruction of this world must be related to you and your conversation with Lady Death herself. What did she do, or what did she say to you?"
Ryu only stays silent at the questions, and his mind is still stuck on the future that the Ancient One showed him.
"How would I be sure that this is not a lied? You said this is one of many possible futures, but I have no proof that this is the future. If anything, there is so much possibility that you are lying to me right now." Ryu ask
"You think I am lying? While your scepticism is well placed, and I have no proof to show you, at the same time, how do you think that I know about the presence of Lady Death on this planet? When you are a master like me when coming to mystic art, seeing the future with the help of the stone is not that hard."
"The stone? What stone?"
"It is not important to you, so let's return to the question I ask you. The conversation with Lady Death, what kind of conversation did you have with her, or maybe in this case, what kind of deal you make with her while you are conversing with her?"