Chapter 6. Cardholders.
The atmosphere began to heat up... Sarli stood in disbelief, looking at the map.
— Sarli, what are you doing? Stop looking at this map, let's get out of here for now, otherwise your sister may wake up and kill us.
"Wait, Minori, I was just curious, why would a card suddenly give power… And what's even more interesting is why it is tied to a specific owner.
While Sarli was saying this, I was listening attentively to extraneous sounds and at one point, I heard someone coming up the stairs to us. The sound was very quiet, so only by listening it was possible to recognize something.
I covered Sarli's mouth with my hand, and he leaned back against the wall. The door of the room opened and a woman's voice rang out from behind the door:
— Misato! I'm at home. Don't you want to eat your favorite onigiri? So… Wait, what's going on here? Why is Misato tied up? Explain yourself, both of you!
— Mom, read this note from Misato, and you will understand everything yourself…
Sarli held out the note without moving away from the wall.
— I see you liked standing like that, Sarli, that you don't even move away from the wall. I said, provoking him to be shy. But in the end, he just pushed me away and rolled his eyes.
— My God... is the event that happened forty years ago happening again…
— Tell me more, please, and tell me what kind of cards this is. – Sarli gave the card into his mother's hand, she hid it in her pocket.
— You'd better go to another person for details. To Akishito Akato. He knows more than I do. Although we traveled together earlier, but I have already forgotten a lot, and he still has to remember what's what... and by the way… Isn't that you, Akato's granddaughter?
— Yes, Akishito Akato is indeed my grandfather, but previously he did not tell me anything about his past, at most about what happened after graduation from school.
— Apparently he wanted to hide the secret about the cards, like all of us. Well... I won't tell you anything else, go quickly to Akishito, he has to tell you.
We hurriedly packed up and boarded the train, when suddenly we received a call from an unknown number.
I picked up the phone and heard the following:
— Just try to search for information about me… And besides, the killer's regime is two days away. Misato has not been eliminated, so you can still consider her a little killer. Good luck not dying! – After these words, the maniac hung up the phone and there was a sound in the train car, as if something exploded nearby.
"Look over there, Minori! This is…
— Yes, brother! It's me again, I came to invite my brother to dinner. And today we have for dinner... Minori!
A bullet whizzed past me and crashed into the glass. The remnants of the glass flew into my head and I started bleeding.
— Misato! Stop, it's not you! Control yourself, please…
— Unfortunately, brother, I will not stop, we must definitely have dinner together! Misato said, making her smile wider and wider.
All the passengers of the train lay down on the floor and lay in shock from what was happening… And who wouldn't be shocked if they saw a girl with a gun in her hand.
She fired the next shot, and this time not at me, but at a simple passenger... a direct hit in the arm. This was due to the fact that he tried to press the communication button with the driver. Unfortunately, he failed to achieve this.
A moment after the shot, a blue-haired girl appeared in front of us, wearing a black hoodie and trousers, with some kind of card in her hands.
— Eh? And how did you get here? However, it doesn't matter, I'll shoot you anyway!
Misato tried to shoot again, but to her failure, she did not succeed, because there were no more cartridges.
— Is it just me or have I seen you somewhere before… Precisely! You're Neil's aunt... only… Some young one?
— Yes, I am Nila, only 30 years younger than at this time now. I was instructed to tell the receivers about what the cards are and where we got them from.
— So you get a map that controls time?
— Oh, shut up! We're not done yet! Misato shouted, after which some other card was thrown at her, and she fell silent and stopped.
— Not only that. Yes, and Minori, as I see, also has cards, only here they are disguised by Akishito as simple key chains that flaunt on your bag.
— Wait a minute… And I'm just finding out about it now? And what are their abilities? Are they the same as yours, Grandma, or even better?
— You don't have to call me grandma right now, it's not like I'm smart, and I don't know about the abilities of your cards myself. Take off your disguise and find out.
I took one off my backpack, after which it instantly turned into a map.
"Speed. Protection. Star"
Nila started to climb up to me to look at the map in more detail and still managed to read it, but I couldn't do it completely.
— So it turns out Akishito gave his own card in the future... however, it doesn't matter, I just need to tell you about the cards themselves. They appeared several centuries ago… So let's skip this part… You only need to know one thing, these cards are very dangerous in the wrong hands, and in a particular case, now one of the most dangerous cards is held by a person named Narito Kei, unless of course he has not given it to anyone else. It seems like in the book about cards it was told that the owner can change only after the death of the previous carrier, but it turned out that this was not the case.
— It turns out that the terror that the maniac is now committing is carried out with the help of cards?
— Yes, most likely these are cards like the moon, because they can control people's minds, I program them to kill.
— And how do we calculate the killer from this information – Sarli was thinking for a moment, when suddenly a new phone call rang.
— You don't have to accept the call, in any case, he's listening to us now, so I'll tell him personally… Get behind us all, you!
In the train, slowly, someone was approaching between the cars… By the look of it, it was a policeman who came to the sounds of gunshots and an explosion in this car.
— Hurry up, let's get out of here! Nila shouted, then threw one of her cards and we moved to the house where we lived during this stupid game…
But what we saw shocked us… Bloodstained windows, the ground around... and a cadaverous smell to boot…
— What happened here… How so… After all, before the ubi regime... - Nila covered my mouth with her hand and said.
— This is the future that will come if you screw up in the search for the real killer, and while everything is fine in your time, let's go back.
The jumps between time occurred almost instantly, but the feeling from them was not very ... threw me into a kind of nausea, and by the look of Nila, she was already used to doing this. But Sarli and I were concussed like that…
But I was glad that we still have a chance to find the killer and maybe in the near future. I think we will all be able to do this so as not to achieve the future that we saw earlier.
Nila said goodbye to us and went somewhere, or you can say "once".
Sarli was very scared, because he wanted to find out what happened to his sister next… And the answer did not take long to wait…
Misato sent him a message that everything was fine with her, the killer's regime was eliminated.
Sarli breathed a sigh of relief and hugged me for some reason.
— Hey, hey, I'm not a soothing toy for you. I said. Although it was pleasant for me, but it still happened so unexpectedly…
After my words, he released me from his embrace and it was noticeable that at the moment when he snuggled up to me, he was crying ... But I didn't tell him anything about that, because I understood his feelings.
We returned home, which was still quiet and everyone sat in different rooms, so we decided not to do anything more for today and also went to our rooms.