The Sky of Farewells
The sky was the color of endings.
Not quite sunset, not quite dusk—that liminal hour when light hesitates at the edge of surrender, when shadows lengthen like memories reaching across time. Tokyo sprawled beneath this canvas of lavender bleeding into amber, its millions of lights beginning their nightly awakening, each one a small defiance against the encroaching dark. Clouds drifted overhead with the lazy certainty of things that have nowhere else to be, their undersides painted in gradients so beautiful they seemed impossible, as if some cosmic artist had decided to practice melancholy in watercolor.
In a small residential neighborhood where everyone knew everyone's name and children's laughter echoed between houses like promises that tomorrow would be just as safe as today, autumn leaves spiraled downward in choreographed descent. Each one caught the dying light as it fell, transforming into a tiny ember of gold and red, a fragment of fire that would never burn.
TITLE CARD:Seven Years Ago — Autumn, 2018
The Promise
INT. MIZUHASHI RESIDENCE — LIVING ROOM — EVENING
The room held warmth the way old books hold stories—accumulated through years of quiet moments, conversations over tea, the simple repetition of ordinary evenings that somehow add up to a life. Photographs lined the walls in chronological order: a young child lived with his grandfather; that same child at three, covered in mud and grinning with gap-toothed pride; at five, reading a book too large for his small hands; at seven, standing beside his grandfather in matching detective hats, both making exaggerated serious faces at the camera.
The most recent photo showed an eight-year-old boy with eyes that held entire galaxies of curiosity, standing beside YAKAHURA MIZUHASHI—a person whose face carried the particular weathering of someone who'd spent decades witnessing humanity's capacity for cruelty but somehow maintained belief in its capacity for kindness.
That same grandfather now knelt by the doorway, tying his grandson's shoelaces with the practiced precision of someone who'd performed this ritual countless times. His hands moved with deliberate care—not because the task was difficult, but because he understood instinctively that these small gestures mattered most. That years from now, it would be moments like this that the heart remembered with crystalline clarity.
The KID bounced on his heels with barely-contained energy, the way children do when every second of waiting feels like an eternity stolen from adventure.
KID:"Grandpa, you're taking forever! Karanuge said he'd wait at the park, but what if he leaves? What if all the good swings are taken? What if—"
YAKAHURA:(His voice carrying the gentle amusement of someone who's heard this exact monologue before) "Karanuge would never leave you behind. You two are like magnets—always finding each other no matter how hard you try not to."
He finished the knot with a practiced twist, sitting back to meet his grandson's eyes. The evening light streamed through the window behind them, illuminating dust motes that drifted like tiny stars, and for just a moment, everything was perfect in that fragile way that perfect things always are—beautiful precisely because they cannot last.
YAKAHURA:(His expression softening into something that might have been prescience or might have been the natural anxiety of loving something vulnerable) "You can play outside, but stay where I can see you, okay?"*
He reached up to adjust his grandson's collar—another small gesture, another moment that would be preserved in memory like a photograph never taken.
YAKAHURA:"The world isn't always kind to those who wander too far from home."
The kid nodded with the earnest solemnity of children making promises they don't yet understand the weight of.
KID:"I promise, Grandpa! I'll be super, super careful! The most careful in the whole world!"
Then—without warning, because children understand that love shouldn't require warning—he threw his arms around Yakahura's neck. The embrace was fierce and brief, carrying the complete trust of someone who'd never known abandonment.
Stay, his heart said. Keep him here. Something feels wrong. But his mouth formed different words: "Love you too. Be back before the streetlights come on. Alright."
The kid pulled away, already moving, already gone. He turned back once at the door, his silhouette backlit by the dying sun, waving with both hands in that exaggerated way that somehow made the gesture more sincere.
KID:"Love you, Grandpa!"
The door closed. Not slammed—just a soft click of latch meeting frame.
Yakahura stood there longer than necessary, watching through the window as his grandson became smaller, racing down the street with that particular child-velocity that seems impossible to maintain yet somehow is. The amber light swallowed him slowly, reducing him to silhouette, then shadow, then memory.
The house felt suddenly larger. Emptier. The way spaces always do when the people who fill them with life temporarily leave.
Yakahura returned to the kitchen where a pot of curry simmered on the stove, filling the house with warmth and spice and the promise of a dinner they would share in less than an hour. He stirred it absently, watching steam rise in lazy spirals, his mind already planning the evening—they'd eat, maybe watch that cartoon his grandson loved, the one about the kid who wanted to be the greatest hero.
He glanced at the clock. 5:47 PM.
"He'll be fine," he said to the empty kitchen, the words meant to convince himself. "He's always fine."
The curry continued to simmer. The clock continued to tick. Tokyo continued its eternal breathing—in and out, day and night, the rhythm that had persisted for centuries and would persist for centuries more, indifferent to the small tragedies unfolding in its shadow.
The Playground
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYGROUND — CONTINUOUS
The playground existed in that golden hour when everything appears slightly more beautiful than it should be, when shadows lengthen into drama and light becomes tangible. The swings moved in lazy arcs, chains creaking with the particular music of childhood summers. A few children remained, their voices carrying in the cooling air—shouting, laughing, living with the unconscious intensity of people who don't yet know that time is not infinite.
The kid arrived breathless, scanning the familiar landscape with the practiced eye of someone who'd mapped every inch of this small kingdom. The sandbox where they'd built elaborate castles that rain had destroyed by morning. The slide where Karanuge had chipped his tooth last spring. The jungle gym that adults said was dangerous but which had never betrayed them.
KID:(Cupping hands around his mouth) "Karanuge! Are you here?"*
His voice echoed slightly, bouncing off the apartment buildings that surrounded the playground like benevolent giants. No answer came except the wind rustling through leaves, carrying the distant sound of train whistles and traffic and the million small noises that formed Tokyo's evening symphony.
The park was emptying. Parents called their children with that particular tone that meant dinner is ready and no negotiating. Small figures scrambled toward open doors and waiting meals, their day's adventures already transforming into stories they'd tell at the table.
The kid waited, hope gradually settling into disappointment like sediment sinking to the bottom of disturbed water. He sat on a swing, pushing himself gently with one foot, watching the sky complete its transformation from day to night—that slow gradient that many film makers had spent their lifes trying to capture on film, never quite succeeding because reality's colors existed outside the spectrum of animation.
"Maybe he forgot," the kid thought, the words forming in that internal voice that was still learning language, still constructing the narrative of self.
He stayed longer than he should have, hoping the way children hope—with absolute commitment, with the belief that wanting something badly enough could make it materialize. Around him, the playground transformed. Familiar equipment became strange in the dimming light. The shadows of swings stretched into impossible lengths, reaching toward him like dark fingers.
That's when he noticed the van.
The Enemy
EXT. STREET ADJACENT TO PLAYGROUND — CONTINUOUS
It was parked across the street, unremarkable in its deliberate plainness. Gray paneling streaked with the accumulated grime of urban existence. No windows except the front windshield. No identifying logos or company names—just blank metal reflecting the deepening twilight, a absence where identity should be.
The kids instincts—whispered warnings he couldn't articulate. Something about the trucks stillness felt dangerous. The way it sat there, engine silent, waiting with the patience of things that have learned how to hunt.
He stood from the swing, the chains rattling with sudden urgency. Time to go home. Time to return to warmth and safety and the grandfather who would already have dinner plated, who would ask about his day with genuine interest, who would never let anything hurt him.
The kid turned toward home. The truck door slid open.
The Theft
INT. UNMARKED VAN — CONTINUOUS
Memory has a way of stretching time when capturing trauma, of taking seconds and expanding them into eternities that the mind replays with crystalline clarity for years afterward.
A hand—gloved in medical latex, professional and clean—clamped over his mouth before he could scream. The rubber tasted bitter, chemical, wrong. Another arm encircled him, lifting him as if he weighed no more than a thought.
He kicked. Thrashed. Tried to bite the hand covering his mouth. But his teeth found only latex and the hollow satisfaction of resistance that changes nothing.
Something pressed against his face—cloth saturated with sweetness that burned his throat, made his head swim with sudden dizyness, probably. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping inward like ink spreading through water.
The kids last coherent thought was an image: his grandfather's face, smiling as he tied shoelaces, promising safety in a world that had just proven itself a liar.
The last thing he saw before consciousness fled was the sky visible through the trucks open door—that impossible gradient of purple and amber, clouds painted in colors that seemed too beautiful for the moment, stars just beginning their nightly emergence. The universe bearing witness to his disappearance with the indifference of celestial mechanics.
The truck door slid shut. Metal on metal—the sound of a coffin closing.
The Search Begins
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYGROUND — MINUTES LATER
The swing moved in the wind, back and forth, back and forth. Empty. Chains creaking their lonely song to no one.
INT. MIZUHASHI RESIDENCE — LIVING ROOM — NIGHT
The curry had burned. Smoke filled the kitchen with the acrid smell of negligence, the pot ruined beyond salvaging. But Yakahura didn't notice because he was outside now, standing in the middle of the street where his grandson should have passed on his way home, calling a name that was swallowed by darkness with no echo returning.
YAKAHURA:"Where are you?! Please! Answer me!"
His voice broke on the second call, desperation bleeding through the professional composure he'd maintained through twenty years of detective work. This was different. This wasn't a case. This was the collapse of the world as he knew it.
Doors opened. Neighbors emerged like witnesses to an accident, drawn by the raw panic in his voice. Flashlights clicked on, cutting small paths through the overwhelming dark—inadequate weapons against the scope of what had been taken.
NEIGHBOR:(Mrs. Takuya from two houses down, her face creased with concern) "When did you last see him?"*
YAKAHURA:(The words coming out wrong, his mouth not working properly, tongue thick with fear) "An hour ago. Maybe more. He promised he'd be back before the streetlights came on. He promised."*
The word hung there—promised—as if child's promises meant anything against whatever had stolen him away.
MONTAGE — THE SEARCH
The world continued its rotation, indifferent. Time passed with the cruel steadiness of things that care nothing for human suffering.
Yakahura running through streets that had become unfamiliar in their sudden hostility, his detective's badge catching streetlight as he showed his grandson's photo to everyone—convenience store clerks, late-shift workers, teenagers smoking outside karaoke bars. Have you seen this child? Please. Anything. His lungs burned but he kept running because stopping meant accepting and acceptance meant death.
Police cars arriving with sirens that wailed like mourners, their lights painting the neighborhood in alternating red and blue, transforming familiar streets into crime scenes. Yellow tape appeared—that universal symbol of tragedy, of boundaries crossed, of the moment when ordinary life becomes evidence.
Search dogs straining at leashes, their noses pressed to the ground where his grandson had last stood, circling the playground in decreasing spirals before sitting—that specific posture that meant the trail has gone cold, that whatever they were tracking had vanished not gradually but completely, as if lifted from the earth without leaving footprints.
Dawn breaking over the neighborhood with cruel beauty—the sky transforming through those same impossible gradients of purple and amber and gold, light returning to illuminate what darkness had stolen. The search parties looked haggard in the new day, their faces showing the specific exhaustion of people who'd spent the night looking for something they hadn't found.
The Investigation
INT. TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE — INVESTIGATION ROOM — THREE DAYS LATER
The room had transformed into a shrine to failure. Every available surface covered with evidence that led nowhere: maps marked with possible routes, photographs of suspicous killers who'd been cleared through alibis, witness statements that contradicted each other into uselessness. The board dominated one wall—a constellation of string and pushpins and desperate hope arranged in patterns that suggested answers while providing none.
At the center, pinned like a butterfly in a collector's case, was his grandson's school photo. That gap-toothed smile. Those eyes that held entire universes of trust and curiosity. The photograph was recent—taken just two months ago—but already felt like an artifact from another lifetime.
DETECTIVE HAYASHI (52, carrying the weight of too many cases like this, face lined with the particular weariness of someone who'd learned that good doesn't always triumph) placed a hand on Yakahura's shoulder. The gesture meant to comfort but feeling instead like an anchor, pulling him deeper down into depths he wasn't ready to acknowledge.
HAYASHI:"Yakahura. You need to go home. You haven't slept in three days. You're no good to anyone like this."
YAKAHURA:(His voice emerged hollow, scraped raw from hours of calling his grandson's name into an indifferent city) "How can I sleep when he's out there? Alone. Scared. Waiting for me to find him."*
The words tasted like ash. Like failure. Like every promise he'd ever made turning to dust in his mouth.
HAYASHI:(Sighing, the sound carrying decades of similar conversations) "You know the statistics. After 48 hours, the chances of—"*
YAKAHURA:(Slamming his hand on the desk with sudden violence, papers scattering like startled birds) "Don't. Don't you dare say it. He's alive. I know he's alive."*
But the certainty in his voice sounded more like prayer than conviction. Like someone trying to speak reality into existence through sheer force of will.
HAYASHI:(Pulling up files on his computer, the screen's glow painting his face in pale blue) "We've checked every registered suspect within a fifty-kilometer radius. Reviewed traffic camera footage from every major intersection. Interviewed everyone in the neighborhood twice. There's no trace. It's like he vanished into thin air."*
YAKAHURA:"Then we're not looking hard enough."
HAYASHI:"No." (He turned the screen toward Yakahura, revealing a document that made the detective's stomach drop) "We're looking in the wrong places."
The file showed news articles arranged chronologically—seventeen missing people over the past five years. All between ages seven and fifteen and twenty and thirty six. All vanished without trace from different parts of Tokyo. All cases eventually gone cold, filed away in folders marked UNSOLVED, transformed from tragedies into statistics.
HAYASHI:"I think your grandson's disappearance is connected to something bigger. Organized. Professional. The kind of operation that has resources, planning, infrastructure."
YAKAHURA:(Leaning forward, hands trembling as they gripped the desk edge) "Then let me investigate. Please. Let me do something besides sit here drowning."*
HAYASHI:(Shaking his head with genuine regret) "You know I can't do that. You're too close to this. Department protocol is clear—family members can't work cases involving their own."*
YAKAHURA:"He's my grandson. My responsibility." (His voice broke completely now, professional composure shattering like glass) "I told him he could play outside. I told him the world was safe if he just stayed close. I failed to protect him."
Silence settled between them—not peaceful but suffocating, filled with everything they couldn't say and everything they both knew.
HAYASHI:(Quietly, with the gentleness of someone delivering a terminal diagnosis) "Go home, Yakahura. Take the week off. We'll keep searching. But you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that—"*
Yakahura stood before Hayashi could finish, the chair scraping against linoleum with a sound like nails on a coffin. He left without another word, the door closing behind him with hollow finality.
In the hallway, under flickering fluorescent lights that made everything look corpse-pale, he stopped. Leaned against the wall. Closed his eyes against tears that came anyway, hot and useless, changing nothing.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the empty corridor, to his grandson who couldn't hear him, to every promise he'd broken. "I'm so sorry."
The Laboratory
INT. YAKA LABORATORY — UNDERGROUND FACILITY — CONTINUOUS
White.
Everything was white in a way that felt weaponized—clinical sterility transformed into an aesthetic choice, beauty through the complete absence of imperfection. Fluorescent lights hummed their electric hymn, reflecting off tile floors polished to mirror-shine. The air itself seemed purified beyond what lungs were designed to process, tasting of industrial cleaning chemicals and something organic underneath—sweet and rotting, like flowers left too long in stagnant water.
The kid woke to white ceiling tiles counting themselves into infinity above him. For a moment—brief and merciful—he didn't remember. Then consciousness returned completely and with it, the understanding that something fundamental had broken in the world's machinery.
He was inside a pod. Medical restraints around wrists and ankles—not tight enough to cut circulation, not loose enough to permit escape. Professional. Precise.
KID:(His voice emerging small and broken, still carrying the remains of childhood) "Where... where am I?"*
Figures in white coats materialized from the darkness like ghosts achieving temporary solidity. They wore surgical masks that reduced them to eyes and institutional indifference—anonymity through uniform, humanity erased by protocol. One leaned over him, shining a penlight into pupils that contracted painfully against the invasion.
LEAD SCIENTIST:(His voice carried no inflection, no emotion, nothing that suggested he saw a terrified person instead of data waiting to be collected) "Subject 17. Optimal. Excellent metrics."*
He made notes on a tablet, scratching against glass with the casual indifference of someone completing routine paperwork rather than documenting the destruction of innocence.
KID:(Tears streaming now, hot against cold skin) "I want my grandpa! Please! I'll be good! I'll do anything! Just let me go home!"*
The Lead Scientist didn't respond. Didn't even look at him. To these people, the kids pleas were just noise—audio data to be recorded and dismissed, screams no more meaningful than the hum of machinery.
LEAD SCIENTIST:"Begin Phase 1: Mapping and baseline establishment. And no anesthesia"
ASSISTANT SCIENTIST:(Younger, his voice carrying the faint tremor of someone new to this) "Sir, without anesthesia, the pain will—"*
LEAD SCIENTIST:(Cutting him off with bureaucratic finality) "The pain is an integral component of the data collection. Yaka protocols are explicit on this matter. Proceed."*
A machine descended from the ceiling—a crown of needles connected via translucent tubes to reservoirs of glowing orange fluid. It lowered with mechanical precision, servos whirring softly, positioning itself above the kids head with the patient inevitability of falling guillotine blades.
KID:(Screaming now, raw and primal, the sound of trust shattering) "NO! PLEASE! GRANDPA! GRANDPA, HELP ME! PLEASE!"*
The needles descended.
They pierced skin first—sharp points finding purchase in soft flesh, parting tissue with surgical precision. Blood welled around each insertion point, thin red streams that trickled down his temples like tears his eyes had already exhausted. Then deeper—through muscle and membrane, finding bone.
The sound was what the kid would remember later, in the years that followed. The sound of needles breaking through skull, that specific crunch-crack of calcium giving way under applied pressure. Not loud. Almost gentle. Like stepping on eggshells.
The pain was indescribable in the literal sense—existing outside the vocabulary of normal human experience, requiring new language to capture. It was totality. Absoluteness. The erasure of everything except sensation.
The orange fluid began to be injected. It burned. Not like fire—fire would have been merciful, would have destroyed nerve endings and brought the relief of numbness.
LEAD SCIENTIST:(Monitoring screens with clinical detachment, as if observing weather patterns rather than agony) "Fluid integration at 12%... 23%... 41%. Subject is responding within predicted parameters. Increase dosage by 15%."*
KID:(Between screams, words barely coherent, consciousness fracturing) "Gran...pa... please... make it... stop... it hurts... it hurts so much... please..."*
But there was no grandfather. No rescue. Just the hum of machines and the clinical observations of figures who'd forgotten—or perhaps never learned—that the screaming thing in the tube.
The camera pulled back slowly, revealing scope through incremental horror. This wasn't just one room. It was a facility. A complex. Dozens of rooms arranged in neat rows, each containing their own stasus pods, their own subject, their own carefully calibrated experimentations.
Dozens of children people in symphony.
The Yaka Laboratory. Where science had abandoned morality so long ago that it no longer remembered they were ever related. Where progress was measured in suffering. Where the future was being built from the shattered remnants of subjects.
TIME LAPSE — SEVEN YEARS
Memory compressed and expanded simultaneously, the way trauma always does. Days blurred into weeks into months into years, each one leaving its mark like sediment building into geology.
The kid grew up more, his body adapting to survive what should have killed him.
His eyes began to glow. Not metaphorically—literally. The X-GENE integration progressing, rewriting the fundamental code of what it meant to be human. Orange light bleeding through eyes that should have been regular color, turning his gaze into something alien and shiny and wrong.
He stopped crying somewhere in the 3rd year. Tears required hope—the belief that expression of suffering might summon relief. He learned better. Screaming became pointless. Begging became exhausting. He learned to retreat inward, to a place where needles couldn't reach, where he could preserve some small core of self that remained untouched.
Other people in adjacent cells. Some made friends through the thin walls, whispering at night when the scientists left. Some taught him things—how to hide pain to avoid attracting attention, which experiments were survivable, which ones weren't. Some died mid-procedure, their bodies failing under strain that exceeded biological tolerance. Workers in hazmat suits dragged the corpses away with the casual efficiency of garbage collection, already moving to prep the next subject. Supply lines required maintenance.
The child watched through reinforced glass, learning. Hardening. His innocence didn't die dramatically—it eroded slowly, worn away by repetition until one day he realized it was simply gone, and he couldn't remember when the theft had occurred.
His hair grew longer, unkempt. No one cared about cutting it. No one cared about comfort. He was Subject 17—a designation, not a name. A data point. A resource to be exploited until depletion.
But his eyes—those eyes that had once sparkled with childish wonder, that had looked at his grandfather with absolute trust—turned cold. Empty. Whatever light had lived inside them died, replaced by the artificial glow of X-GENE modification. He stopped being a person. Became something else. Something without a proper word because language hadn't evolved to describe it yet.
The Weapon
INT. YAKA LABORATORY — SUBJECT 17'S CELL — YEAR 7
The cell measured exactly three meters by three meters—dimensions chosen for optimal space utilization, not human comfort. A metal bed.
The kid—fifteen now, though "kid" felt increasingly inaccurate, sat on that very bed. His hair hung past his shoulders, unwashed and tangled. His body was lean.
He stared at his hands. Turned them over slowly, examining palms and knuckles and the network of scars that covered every inch of visible skin. Orange energy flickered around his fingers—not quite solid, not quite flame. Cosmic. Alien. Like holding fragments of dying stars.
A blade manifested in his palm.
The GALAXY BLADE (HOSHIKIRI) materialized from nothing—pure orange energy coalescing into the shape of a katana, its edge shimmering with light that seemed to exist slightly outside normal space. A chain of glowing links extended from the pommel, wrapping around his wrist like living jewelry, each link pulsing with stored power.
He'd learned to summon it at will now. His gift. His curse. His only companion in seven years of isolation.
The blade was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at—the kind of beauty that nature never grew, that could only exist through violation of natural law. He watched light play along its edge, mesmerized by the way it seemed to cut through air itself, like leaving momentary wounds in reality.
INTERCOM:(A persons voice, clinical and bored) "Subject 17. Report to Testing Chamber C. Compliance required within sixty seconds. Non-compliance will result in death."*
He stood slowly, mechanically. The blade dissipated into particles of light that faded like dying fireflies. His movements were automatic—seven years of conditioning had made obedience instinctive. Resistance had been trained out of him through methods the scientists called "behavioral modification" and which any honest person would call control.
But deep inside, beneath the X-GENE modifications and trauma-induced numbness, beneath the layers of learned helplessness and enforced compliance, something still burned.
Not hope. Hope had died years ago, buried under accumulated disappointments. Not even hatred. Hatred required energy he didn't possess.
Just rage. Pure. Cold. Patient. The kind of rage that doesn't explode but instead waits, accumulating like pressure behind a dam, knowing that eventually every structure fails.
He walked toward the door, his reflection catching in the cell's metal surfaces. For just a moment, he saw himself—not as he was, but as he'd been. Eight years old. Gap-toothed smile. Eyes full of trust. Believing his grandfather's promise that the world was safe.
The reflection vanished. The door opened with a hydraulic hiss. He stepped forward into another day of being unmade and remade, one experiment at a time.
The Ruins
TITLE CARD:Present Day — Hours After Yaka's Destruction
EXT. DESTROYED YAKA LABORATORY — DAWN
The screen corrupted. Static. Visual noise. Like reality's rendering engine was struggling to process what it was being asked to display. Then clarity resolved, and the clarity was worse than the glitches.
The facility—that pristine temple of white tiles and clinical efficiency—had been transformed into crater and rubble. Twisted steel beams jutted from concrete like broken bones through skin. Glass glittered everywhere, catching the rising sun and transforming the devastation into something that would photograph beautifully, which felt obscene.
Smoke rose in thick columns, backlit by dawn's amber light, creating atmospheric effects that artists would recognize—beauty and horror coexisting, refusing to be separated. Ash fell like snow, coating everything in grey, erasing distinctions between what had been building and what had been human.
The smell was indescribable. Burning metal and plastic. Charred flesh. Chemical compounds never meant to combust, now releasing toxic signatures into air that would taste wrong for weeks. Underneath it all, something grusome—bodies.
Sirens wailed endlessly—ambulances, fire trucks, police cars creating an orchestra of emergency that had been playing for hours now, would play for hours more. Their lights painted the grey landscape in alternating reds and blues, colors that felt too vibrant against the monochrome destruction.
AKIO HUKITASKE moved through the devastation like a ghost haunting his own actions. His blue hair—that impossible shade of turquoise that marked him as different—was matted with ash and dried blood. His violet eyes reflected firelight, making them appear to glow with their own internal luminescence. His hands were covered in dust and blood. Not all from enemies. Some from people he'd tried to save. Some from people he couldn't reach in time. And that the enemy had already finished killing to cover up evidence.
HIKATA YAKASUKE worked beside him in uncharacteristic silence. Usually, Hikata filled every quiet moment with jokes and commentary and the performance of being okay. Now he said nothing, just moved rubble with mechanical efficiency, his comedian's mask finally abandoned for now because no one was laughing.
Together they lifted a concrete slab that shouldn't have required two people but did, revealing a young adult trapped beneath. Her legs were crushed. Bone visible through torn flesh. But she was breathing. Barely. Rhythmically. The stubborn persistence of biology refusing to quit even when quitting would be mercy.
AKIO:(Kneeling, fingers finding pulse points, his medical training taking over) "She's stable. Relatively. Get the medics."*
HIKATA:(His voice shaking, stripped of its usual performance) "How many is that? Six? Seven survivors out of... how many worked here?"*
Akio didn't answer. The mathematics of survival and death felt too cruel to calculate, too final to voice. Numbers would make it real in a way that silence allowed him to defer.
RUMANE approached from the east perimeter, her tablet somehow still functional despite the electromagnetic chaos. Everything about her suggested analytical precision—the way she moved, the way she processed information, the way she'd already calculated seventeen escape routes from any given position out of pure habit.
RUMANE:"The police are attempting to establish a perimeter, but civilian foot traffic is overwhelming their position. Family members searching for the missing. The force doesn't have personnel capacity to maintain the boundary."
AKIO:(Standing, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand, leaving a streak across his cheek that made him look like a warrior in some ancient painting) "Let them through. If it were my family buried here, I'd break through any barrier they erected."*
He turned to survey the scope of destruction—his destruction. This was supposed to be victory. The culmination of Part 1's entire arc—the climactic battle where good triumphed over evil, where the corrupt pharmaceutical company that weaponized medicine was finally brought to justice.
But standing in the aftermath, surrounded by bodies that had been people with names and families and dreams, surrounded by ash that had been building and equipment and human flesh, Akio felt no triumph. Because Yaka had still managed to cause even more death, Akio tried to prevent while saving people.
Only weight. The specific gravity of consequences that can't be undone, choices that can't be unmade, blood that can't be washed away no matter how thoroughly you scrub.
HIKATA:(Placing a hand on Akio's shoulder with uncharacteristic gentleness) "You saved people. This was necessary. The alternative—"*
AKIO:(His voice hollow, scraped clean of emotion) "Tell that to the ones I couldn't save. Tell that to their families. Explain to them why their loved one's death was necessary for the greater good."*
Before Hikata could formulate response, commotion erupted near the northern perimeter—raised voices, the sound of someone forcing their way through police lines with the desperate strength that emergency gives people.
The Recognition
EXT. DESTROYED YAKA LABORATORY — NORTHERN PERIMETER — CONTINUOUS
YAKAHURA MIZUHASHI pushed through the barricade with the single-minded focus of someone who'd been searching for seven years and finally received coordinates. His detective's badge swung from his neck on a lanyard, catching emergency lights, but it was his eyes that commanded attention—eyes that had spent seven years developing the specific haunted quality that comes from persistent failure, from loving something lost. Beocming a detective all for a grandson. And failing to find even a spec of dust of evidence, up until now.
Gray streaked his temples now. Lines carved his face deeper than forty-four years should allow. He looked like someone who'd aged for nothing, each calendar year counting for seven because grief compounds interest.
OFFICER:"Sir, this is an active investigation site! You can't—"
YAKAHURA:(Not stopping, not even slowing, his voice carrying the authority of desperation) "Detective Mizuhashi, Special Crimes Unit. I'm assigned to this case."*
It was a lie. He'd pulled strings.
He navigated through the devastation with purpose that bordered on frantic. His eyes scanned every face—the living being treated by medics, the dead arranged under sheets, the figures moving through smoke and ash. Searching. Always searching. For features he'd held in memory for seven years, features that appeared in dreams and nightmares with equal frequency, the face he saw every time he closed his eyes.
Then he saw movement through the smoke. A figure. Young. Orange light glowing through the gray ash like a beacon, like a lighthouse guiding ships through fog.
Yakahura's breath caught. Time performed that peculiar trick it does during moments of profound significance—simultaneously stopping completely and accelerating past the speed of thought.
YAKAHURA:(Whispering, the words barely forming) "No... it can't be..."*
The smoke cleared with theatrical timing, wind carrying it away to reveal what had been hidden.
KAZUKI MIZUHASHI stood in the center of the ruins like a monument to suffering. Fifteen years old but carrying himself with the bearing of someone much older—or someone who'd never really been young at all. His clothes were torn, revealing a roadmap of scars that covered every visible inch of skin. Medical scars. Experimental scars. The cartography of seven years spent as a laboratory subject.
His eyes glowed with orange light—X-GENE modification evident, pupils replaced by cosmic fire. Blood streaked his face from a cut above his eyebrow, dripping down his cheek in a line that could have been tears if his body still remembered how to create them.
In his right hand, the GALAXY BLADE (HOSHIKIRI) manifested fully—seven feet of orange cosmic energy formed into katana shape, its edge shimmering with light that seemed to cut through more than just space. A chain of energy links coiled around his forearm, each link representing stored power, pulsing with bioluminescent rhythm.
He eyes were shining in the way disasters are devastating—terrible and dangerous, impossible to look away from even when looking causes pain. A weapon shaped like a child, or a kid reshaped into weapon. The distinction no longer mattered because the transformation was complete.
YAKAHURA:(His legs moving before conscious decision, tears already streaming, seven years of grief exploding into desperate hope) "You're alive! Oh my, you're alive!"*
He ran toward his grandson with arms outstretched, the posture of embrace prepared, all the years of searching culminating in this single moment of reunion. Words tumbled out—not coherent, not organized, just raw emotion given voice.
YAKAHURA:(Sobbing openly, professional composure shattered completely) "I searched everywhere! Every single day! I never stopped! I tried my best! I blamed myself every single day for letting you go outside! Please, please forgive me—I'm so sorry! I'm so—"*
KAZUKI:"Stop."
The single syllable cut through Yakahura's desperate rambling like a blade through silk. Surgical. Final. The old gramps froze mid-run, ten feet from his grandson, arms still outstretched in an embrace that would never be completed.
Silence settled between them. Not peaceful silence—suffocating silence. The kind that exists in loss and abandoned houses and the space between last words and death.
YAKAHURA:(His voice breaking into fragments) "I... I found you. Finally. After all these years—"*
KAZUKI:(His voice was calm. Clinical. Empty. The voice of someone who'd screamed themselves hoarse and found silence more effective) "You want to know what they did to me, old garbage?"*
He didn't wait for permission to continue.
KAZUKI:"They cut me open. Again. And again. And again. Different locations each time—lungs, stomach, skull. They'd make incisions with laser precision, no anesthesia because 'pain response is valuable data.' They injected me with compounds that burned from the inside. Like they were replacing my blood with acid. Like every cell was being set on fire individually."
His orange eyes—those eyes that once sparkled with childish joy—fixed on his grandfather with the cold precision of a microscope examining bacteria. No hatred. Hatred would have required emotion. This was assessment. Categorization.
KAZUKI:"They put needles in my brain. Not metaphorically—literally. Through my skull. Pumped me full of chemicals until I couldn't remember my own name. Until I forgot what sunshine looked like. Until I forgot I'd ever been anything except Subject 17."
Yakahura's legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees in the ash, hands clutching at nothing, grasping at air that offered no purchase.
YAKAHURA:(Barely audible, voice reduced to whisper) "I... I didn't know. I searched everywhere. I never suspected a research laboratory. I—"*
KAZUKI:(Cutting him off, voice rising now, seven years of accumulated anguish finding outlet) "They made me watch other people die screaming. Some I'd made friends with. We'd whisper to each other through the walls at night, making escape plans we knew were fantasies. Promising we'd get out together. Then one day, their cell would go quiet. People in hazmat suits would drag out a body. And we'd get a new neighbor who'd start the cycle over."*
He took a step forward. The Galaxy Blade's energy crackled, responding to emotion, casting orange shadows that made his face look demonic and tragic simultaneously.
KAZUKI:"Every night, I called for you. Every. Single. Night. Even after the scientists told me no one was coming. Even after they laughed and said I'd been abandoned. Even after I knew better, some stupid part of me kept calling. 'Grandpa, help me. Please. It hurts so much. Please make it stop.'"
His voice broke on the last word—the only sign of vulnerability in a monologue delivered with surgical precision.
YAKAHURA:(Tears streaming freely now, his voice raw and desperate) "I tried! I swear I tried! Every lead, every tip, every possible—"*
KAZUKI:(Shouting now, the dam finally breaking, seven years of anguish erupting like a volcanic event) "NOT HARD ENOUGH! You were supposed to be my hero! You were supposed to keep me safe! That's what you PROMISED when you let me go outside! That's what family are SUPPOSED to do!"*
The orange energy around him flared in response to emotional surge. The chain on his blade shortened visibly—three links consumed by the power spike, dissipating into particles of light. His control was slipping. Or maybe he was choosing to let it slip.
KAZUKI:(His voice dropping now to something worse than shouting—cold, final, delivered with the flat affect of someone reading a verdict) "You failed me. And it's all your fault."*
The words hung in the air like an execution sentence. Like the closing of a door that could never be reopened. Like the snapping of a thread that had held reality together.
Yakahura opened his mouth but no sound emerged. What could he say? What words existed in any language to bridge seven years of pain, seven years of a grandson calling for rescue that never came, seven years of promises broken so thoroughly that the concept of promise itself had been destroyed?
YAKAHURA:(Finally, barely audible, the sound of something breaking) "I... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."*
KAZUKI:(Turning away, his silhouette backlit by flames still burning in the rubble) "Your sorry means nothing to corpses."*
He walked away into the smoke. The Galaxy Blade dissipated into particles of light that faded like dying stars. The ash and smoke swallowed him whole—exactly like seven years ago, exactly like always, disappearing into gray that offered neither comfort nor answers.
Yakahura remained on his knees in the ash, surrounded by the ruins of Yaka Laboratory and the ruins of his own soul. His hands dug into the gray powder beneath him, fingers clutching earth that provided no comfort, no purchase, nothing except the physical confirmation that he was still kneeling, still breathing, still condemned to continue existing despite wishing otherwise.
Behind him, thirty feet away, Akio watched the scene unfold with violet eyes that understood too much. He recognized that specific look on Kazuki's face—the particular devastation of a person forced to save himself because the high ups who promised care failed completely. He'd seen that look before. In mirrors. In the eyes of other survivors. In the faces of people who'd learned that the world breaks promises as casually as it breaks bones.
AKIO:(Quietly, to himself, the words meant for no one but carrying anyway) "Another victim I couldn't save by destroying this place."*
The sirens continued their eternal wailing. The sun continued its rise, indifferent to human suffering. The earth continued its rotation at exactly 1,000 miles per hour, carrying them all toward tomorrow whether they wanted to arrive there or not.
Epilogue — The Detective's Vigil
INT. YAKAHURA'S APARTMENT IN THE ALLEY ACROSS THE HUKITASKE PHARMACY — NIGHT — THREE WEEKS LATER
The apartment was small in the way that suggested economics rather than choice. One room serving as bedroom, living room, and office simultaneously. The walls were covered—every available surface transformed into investigation board. Photographs connected by red string. Maps marked with locations. Notes written in increasingly frantic handwriting as desperation accumulated over years.
At the center of the largest board, pinned like a butterfly in a collector's case, hung two photographs.
The first: his grandson at age eight. School photo. Gap-toothed smile. Eyes that held entire universes of trust and wonder. Hair neatly combed. Collar straight. The image of a child who believed the world was fundamentally good and adults fundamentally trustworthy.
The second: security footage from the Yaka ruins. The same kid at fifteen. Eyes glowing orange with X-GENE modification. Face streaked with blood and ash. The Galaxy Blade manifesting in his hand. Beautiful and broken. Weapon and victim. The image of everything that photograph number one could never have predicted.
Yakahura sat at his desk, staring at both images simultaneously, trying to find the thread connecting them. Trying to understand how seven years could transform one into the other. Trying to accept that both were his grandson—that these weren't different people but different versions of the same person, the before and after of a tragedy he'd failed to prevent.
YAKAHURA:(To the photographs, voice hoarse from disuse) "I'm going to save you. Even if you hate me. Even if you never want to see my face again. Even if you tell me again that I'm the reason for everything that happened to you. I won't fail you twice."*
He opened his laptop—ancient machine held together by spite and necessity. A file labeled "YAKA INVESTIGATION — PHASE 2: REMNANTS & SURVIVORS" filled the screen. Hundreds of pages. Thousands of names. Locations marked on maps. Known associates. Experimental subjects who'd survived the destruction. Evidence suggesting that Yaka's destruction wasn't an ending.
It was a beginning.
His phone buzzed—harsh vibration against wood that made him jump despite expecting it. Unknown number. No caller ID. The kind of call that's never good news.
He answered anyway. Because he'd spent seven years answering every call, checking every message, following every lead no matter how unlikely. Because the one call you don't answer might be the one that matters.
YAKAHURA:"Mizuhashi."
DISTORTED VOICE:(Filtered through software) "Detective Mizuhashi. We understand you're looking for your grandson."*
Yakahura's grip on the phone tightened until his knuckles turned white, until the plastic creaked under pressure.
YAKAHURA:"Who is this?"
DISTORTED VOICE:"Someone who can help. The kid you're searching for isn't dead. You know this already. But he's not alone either. Yaka may have fallen, but its seeds were planted years ago. New gardens are growing in the ruins. And your grandson... he's become their most shining flower."
YAKAHURA:(Standing now, voice sharp with desperate hope) "Where is he?!"*
DISTORTED VOICE:"Patience, Detective. All will be revealed in appropriate sequence. But know this: the next time you see him, he won't be a victim anymore." (A pause, calculated for dramatic effect) "He'll be a weapon. The question is—whose hand will be pulling the trigger?"
The line went dead. Dial tone. That particular sound that signifies ending, disconnection, the severing of communication.
Yakahura stared at his phone for a long moment, then at the photographs of his grandson—past and present, innocent and corrupted, lost and found and lost again in different ways.
He grabbed his coat from the chair. Sleep was impossible. It had been impossible for seven years. The insomnia had become such a fundamental part of his existence that he'd forgotten what it felt like to wake feeling rested.
He had work to do.
The City at Night
EXT. TOKYO CITYSCAPE — NIGHT - 2020
The camera pulled back slowly, incrementally, revealing scope through movement. From the window of Yakahura's apartment to the building to the block to the district to the city entire.
Tokyo at night was a living organism. Eight million lights. Eight million people. Eight million stories intersecting and diverging like constellations, each one believing themselves the center of their own narrative while existing as background character in millions of others.
Somewhere in this sprawl of concrete and light and compressed humanity, Kazuki Mizuhashi walked alone. The Galaxy Blade remained dormant but present, waiting inside him like a second heartbeat. Rage and pain and the learned helplessness of seven years carrying him forward toward purposes he hadn't fully articulated even to himself.
Somewhere, Akio Hukitaske tended to survivors of the destruction, he'd caused from trying to save them, trying to heal damage he'd partly created, caught in the impossible mathematics of greater good and acceptable casualties.
Somewhere, the remnants of Yaka gathered in shadows, planning resurrection. Because organizations like that don't die.
And somewhere, a detective who'd failed once refused to fail again. Even if salvation required destruction. Even if saving his grandson meant destroying what he'd become. Even if the only way to bring him home was to follow him into darkness.
The sky was clear tonight. Stars visible despite Tokyo's light pollution—pinpricks of ancient light that had traveled millions of years to arrive at this specific moment, to witness this specific tragedy, to bear silent testimony to human suffering with the indifference of celestial mechanics.
But humans weren't indifferent. That was both their greatest weakness and their only hope. The thing that broke them and the thing that saved them, often simultaneously.
TITLE CARD:"The night the stars went dark, a kid called for his hero. The night the stars returned, he'd learned to save himself. And that's when the real tragedy began."
FADE TO BLACK.
Post-Credits Scene
INT. ABANDONED WAREHOUSE — INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT — NIGHT
The warehouse smelled of rust and decay and the particular staleness of spaces humans had abandoned. Moonlight streamed through broken skylights, creating patterns of light and shadow that moved as clouds passed overhead.
Kazuki stood before a massive screen—the kind that suggested resources, organization, infrastructure. On it, security footage played on loop: Akio Hukitaske in the moment of Yaka's destruction. The explosion. The collapse. The aftermath. Watched and rewatched so many times that Kazuki had memorized every frame.
VOICE:(From shadows, cultured and calm) "That's the one who destroyed our home. Akio Hukitaske—the so-called healer who solves problems through destruction." (A faint scoff followed) "I'm not surprised you're willing to cooperate, even without a clear goal. After all, we experimented on you until you could no longer feel anything. You made a very convenient subject. A perfect little tool." (The tone cooled further) "Because of that, you'll follow every order we give you. How pathetic. Your nothing but an empty vessel now." (A pause)c "An enemy of our enemy—that's all you are. Something useless that obeys, something we can push around whenever we like. You've always been our plaything, stupid kid. And doing it like this?" (The voice softened, almost pleased) "It excites us. We enjoy using our toys to destroy anyone foolish enough to interfere with our research. That pleasure—well, it's what every one of us at Yaka lives for."*
Kazuki's eyes glowed brighter, orange light intensifying in response to unnamed emotion.
KAZUKI:"When do we move against him?"
VOICE:"Soon. But not yet. First, we need to show him what his heroism created. Make him understand that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease."
A figure stepped into the light—THE CLOWN, though that name didn't fully capture what he'd become. His face was painted in a grotesque smile that never quite reached his eyes, lips too red, teeth too white. Purple smoke rose from his fingertips like the ghosts of the dead he'd consumed—literal ghosts, because his ability transformed corpses into weapons, into servants, into fuel.
THE CLOWN:(Grinning, the expression predatory despite the humor it mimicked) "Let's give the healer a taste of his own medicine, shall we? After all..."* (He gestured to Kazuki with theatrical flourish) "...you're living proof that sometimes salvation and damnation are the same thing wearing different masks. And the same aplies to me. Were alike. We were both experiments. Who used to live happy damned foolish lifes. That the world soon took from the grasps of are goofy hands."
Kazuki said nothing. Just continued staring at the screen, at Akio's face frozen in a moment of exhausted victory, violet eyes reflecting flames. The Galaxy Blade manifested in his hand—automatic response to emotion, muscle memory of seven years learning to weaponize pain.
The orange glow reflected in his empty eyes, making them appear to burn from within.
Outside, Tokyo continued its eternal breathing. Trains ran on schedule. Salary workers stumbled home drunk. Teenagers laughed in karaoke booths. The world turned with casual indifference to the violence being planned in its darkest corners.
Morning would come. It always did. The question was: who would survive to see it?
FADE OUT...
[NEXT EPISODE: "The Invitation" — Three months pass. Akio receives a mysterious letter from the Grand Line Hotel. The wristbands. The trap. And the beginning of a game he doesn't yet know he's playing.]