Max wakes up, next to him is Dairue, passed out on the road.
Expecting was done, he woke up to nothing. Cascading memories, tolerable for most, create a dysfunctional mind. His pale body was white in the street light, waiting by the car. Max waited on and on, nothing happened, Window Town was as broken as ever.
The boy noticed a similar phenomenon to the church, cloaks that hid certain pieces of perception, yet he couldn't understand why the cloak did not dissolve when entering the town. He wrote down his findings, confident he figured something out when nobody else did.
Soon, a car pulled over the side of the highway, roads between another, concrete in between. A man with a beard and long purplish hair left the car, a noticeable eyepatch was on his left eye, the dark could not conceal its shape.
"Till I am the dead, resting my head, I will pretend." the figure was chanting a phrase, was it to keep him safe? To keep his comfort next to his mind.
The man was only labeled "Raiden", his identity was never revealed by his peers, and his lone daughter is the only person attached to his name. Raiden walked over to Max, asking for help to lift Dairue out of the road. He left his car door open, they carried him inside. Raiden began to interrogate Max, asking where in the city they were, what happened, and when.
Max could answer the last question, he didn't want to remember, he wanted to erase his mind and leave a new blank slate where he didn't have to think. Raiden inspected the car, immediately finding out it was Kenji's. He went into the city, chanting the same phrase, after taking one step, he knew it was too late, but still carried on.
The boy went inside his car, taking the front seat, denying the seatbelt of any hold. He watched as Raiden took precautions before going in, Max could only observe. Raiden's movements were fluid, looking around before taking another step.
"The arc is too dangerous to explore..." Raiden sighed, knowing it stops being a chase and starts being a search and rescue operation.
He kept his distance from the building, keeping the tension between him and the concrete low. A name was called, the screams were coming from the various buildings, sound was reflecting all around. His ears were not resonating, the name sounded like it came from every direction.
"This can't be Kenji, it's another bait...The voice is near flawless, down to the lows..." Raiden kept pacing around the border, keeping away from the trees. The hurdle of grass blades and overgrown bushes kept his feet locked on the rock. It was a hindrance to walking too slow, he had to keep up with the hind.
He lit took a spotlight, one bright enough to pierce through the dense foliage. Raiden plugged the spotlight to his hefty wirings, he walked back to the car window, asking Max to turn on the power switch inside. The beam was visible from a kilometer, he waved it around to try and give a clear message to those inside.
Kenji immediately saw the light, Raiden had arrived.
He took his phone and called Raiden again.
"I am on the north side of town, my car is parked next to yours. My light is shining right now, can you see it? Confirm." his husky voice, rugged and deep like the ocean floor. He spoke calmly to his peer, making sure all details were clear.
"Yes, I can see it, larger than my thumb. Not too far away." Kenji wanted to make a run for it, yet he kept a promise to himself. Putting other people first was his intent.
"How many of you are trapped inside?" Raiden let the light, wave onto its own, trying to see if he can make out any figures in the skyline.
"5, Max, Dairue, Yuwari, Yasu, and me."
"Hehe, 2 of them have been dealt with, that leaves with 3. Somehow Max and Dairue got out, and 1 of them passed out in the car." Raiden laughed with amusement, he was proud of how easily they navigated out of town.
"Yuwari went west, Yasu went north, both of those directions from your perspective." Kenji jumped off the roof, set on trying to find Yasu, he let Raiden search for Yuwari by himself.
Kenji took a different approach, instead of taking the route slowly, he was erratic, spasms in his movements. Riding the side wall that hasn't shifted, keeping low yet quick to the ground. Corner to corner, nothing was there, on the walls that fell on one plain, another it stood upright.
Tools bobbing up and down, levitating from one angle, and another falling flat on the ground. The mind tried to ignore it, the goal was in front of his face, yet it wasn't close enough to think poorly of its decision. The town was drowning from a substance that shifted everything around, the cloak was not in place, it impeded the corridors to a closed drywall.
Yasu was atop a small radio tower, keeping his hands firmly tight around the cylindrical base of the wiring cables. Kenji stood at the platform that held the tower together, Yasu climbed down, and his eyes were in unfocused gaze as if they lost touch with reality itself. The thousand-yard stare, they call it, meaninglessly climbing down with no words to say.
"I found Yasu, he's staring into the distance, what do I do?" Kenji wrapped a blanket around him, trying to keep him warm and steady from the cold wind that blasted the backside of the Town.
"Get here as quickly as possible, if you're in the northside, you should be able to walk around the town, lay him down after you get here," Raiden spoke in distrust, trying to stay cautious, unable to offer a trustworthy, knowing the radios could be mimicked, easily stolen, and likely broken.
'Don't fail on me Kenji, you will be executed if you don't get here." his translucent eyes tried to look into the shadowed westward, the dim lights made everything blurred with a glow.
Figures ran in the shallow light, he deemed them nothing more than hallucinations. Raiden knew if he thought less, he would consume less mental strain, laughs filled the hallway across. Yet one struck his eye, it wasn't a figure, it was the shape of a man.
It looked him dead in the eye, across the room, he knew it was looking at him without needing to see. Raiden quietly walked back, as not to disturb the chants, the boarded-up windows gave him a sign not to come back twice. He tried to forget it too, but something caught his attention.
A person behind him was whispering not to go inside, a gun was pointed at him. Yuwari kept watch of his movement, he didn't know how to distinguish a person from what they were. Raiden raised his hands and asked nicely if he was "Yuwari". The boy with the gun, answered "yes".
"Raiden?"
"Put the gun down, we have to go."
Raiden didn't waste time, he left to the side of the building, Yuwari kept talking about the person inside, yet neither of them wanted to disturb the peace. They kept their gun on hold, yet Raiden was not convinced about who "Yuwari" was, he could never trust anything that came from a shapeshifting town.
"Tell me something that only someone normal would know..." Raiden wanted more evidence, he wanted the boy to prove himself innocent.
"Am at the edge of convincing myself, that none of this is real. I wish it wasn't real, I wish to forget." Yuwari had a blank stare, Raiden knew from that singular instance, that he was true to himself.
"My ears feel like they've been ripped apart, I hear chimes and distant bubbles..." Yuwari was still walking aimlessly, following Raiden every bit of the way. They wanted to leave everything behind, and even their most fearless unit was not willing to stay any longer. Raiden didn't know what to say, he kept his mouth shut and continued walking.
They leave the clearing unharmed, a few walls have left, some new ones formed whilst their back was turned. The car was up ahead, in the road, it eerily taking a break, yet even the car had shifted from its position.
Kenji took a break from walking, seeing a splinter on his chest, it was a metal splinter that hooked to his body. His breath was running out, he carried himself and his burden with two legs. He tried to speed up yet nothing came by, he wasn't trying. The clearing was only minutes away, yet each branch cracking under his feet, made his journey feel longer.
Ants bit Yasu's leg, they crawled up from a nearby hill he stepped on. His empty gaze was broken, he took control of his mind and assisted Kenji. His clothes were drenched in blood, the splinter has pierced his body, he kept it however, not attempting to pull it out.
"Arrghh! This wasn't here before, the shifting rocks must've been placed at the right moment." Kenji couldn't hold back the pain as much as he wished, his ears, ringing without a reason, almost as if dust caught up inside. Yasu opened his phone, he used the bright light to see through the grass.
Underneath them, the ground was flooding with ants, everywhere they went, every step was another ant. The splinter disappeared, his flesh and skin returned, and he felt the sharp pain, yet he had the strength to run. He pulled Yasu's arm and they ran up the town, stepping over every debris left by it.
They left the clearing and met up with Raiden, the ants were taking over the town. Soon, the gray cracked concrete, clean tiles, became a red crawling mass. Raiden ran for his light, but it was too late, they couldn't do much for it anymore. Their heads were throbbing, pulsating with veins in their temples.
The ants were like a wall, wrapping the town in a dome, eating through the cloak it had before. Nobody talked the whole ride, yet the silence was more akin to the wind than peace. Raiden kept driving, Kenji held his chest and Max was on the look-out. Their car felt the breeze, the sound of a choir chanting a rising and falling note, unmistakably morbid.
The operation fell victim to failure, gaining no further knowledge except the one of knowing no hope was left.
Your stare, It never changed, you never saw much, you only ran. Imagination saved you, you gave "it" a form, one it never had. To treat something unfathomable with a distinct desire to make a shape out of its existence, what was "it"? To treat something like an object to see it, to visualize even what it was.
Pale skin, clammed eyes, sockets of veins that pumped the bleeding mess inside. Your deathly hollow was a saving grace, your deathly desire to crawl open the unknown without its knowledge, a dying blessing. To you, it was nothing, the ants were only the start, the fire was an ignition to coalesce a mountain of madness.
Do you feel defeated? That not even your endless capabilities to imagine something out of nothing, was enough to give it a name, what do you call the nameless? What do you call something you can't make out? The unknown is bleak and too meaningless, if science can't study its endless cycles, then how can five people attempt to rake its forgiveness?
Max kept thinking, the dark blue sky kept him awake, the moonlight was bright enough to make out the trees. Regrown woods from old ash, they continued driving down the highway.
The city came to view, its lights more ominous, expanding greater limits.
The limits kept the charm of the city atmosphere, the Tetsu Kabe was on high alert that night, for tomorrow had the display on board.
"Death wish huh, what came into the minds of all 5 of you, to explore the "Arc Maderu"?" Raiden asked Kenji, wanting to know more about where it all started, and why they were there.
"Curiosity came with a price, eh, maybe I wanted to know more... It came to my senses late that we were outnumbered, by an enemy that didn't need to show itself. To call it an enemy feels wrong, it's not against us, we don't even know what it's against. Perhaps we're nothing more than an obstacle on its path, if it even had a path..."
Kenji had his pride challenged, Raiden was staring him down through the mirror, a concerned look on his otherwise experienced face.
"You seek a notion far from here, I gave up on it already, there's no point trying to find out, the history books didn't offer anything other than "Non-Euclidian" things. Surely someone else was researching this kind of thing, but then no. All of it is just experiences, they had no answers..."
Raiden replied to his desire to seek more from it, Kenji was not backing down, yet that church incident was engraved into their head. They couldn't imagine more, they could only wish upon a star for a miracle to unveil itself. Reality is often unforgiving as it is demanding.
Fireworks, they shine brighter on dark days...