K: Midnight

Chapter One: Mikoto

December 20, 2012

Everything was wrong, horribly wrong. I could see Mikoto still but not like I used to. The image of him, his red, was fragile, barely hanging in the balance between here and nowhere; and in the midst of this, as I sat in Ashinaka High School with Izumo, listening to the uproar outside, I knew that something bad was going to happen.

A moment later, my suspicion was confirmed when once again, I felt Mikoto's presence entering my mind. My consciousness descended to a dreamlike state and that's when it appeared: I'm sorry, Anna, I heard him say. I'm sorry I won't be able to show you that lovely red anymore.

Just then, the realization struck me and I gasped awake, dropping my marbles in a rolling splatter on the floor.

Izumo rushed to me and caught me by the arm, and while I couldn't hear — my thoughts still carried in a dream, the dream that was Mikoto, his voice a whirling echo in my head — I saw Izumo motioning to me. No doubt, he was urging me to tell him what was wrong; and when I failed to answer him, he shook me once, then twice, yet all I did was breathe Mikoto's name before bolting out the door.

Down the hall and out across the concrete yard, conflicting auras — red and blue — surrounding me, I ran. Death and danger toppled in the form of earth and giant slabs of concrete that erupted and cascaded all around, their violent fury countered by the silent flecks of snow that littered every surface of the grounds. Ashinaka was a war zone, and yet I didn't seem to see it, nor could I yet hear it. All I thought about, all I cared about, was him: Mikoto. I had to get to him before it was too late.

Racing over skirmishes like passing street performers — the brawls, the clashes, simple acts I paid no interest to — I vaguely sensed the darting auras whizzing past, and still I made no effort to evade them. I remember thinking clearly that their power couldn't touch me. Not yet, at least, I told myself. Not until I have a chance to save him.

Gradually, I felt my senses trickling back to me. I caught the rhythmic labor of my breathing as it hit the wintry air in hazy little gusts. Even so, the rumbles, booms, the screeches of the battle, were but echoes in my ears; and then a blast above the others shook the earth and threw me to the ground.

I cried out as my outstretched palms collided with the frozen dirt and slid on icy fractals, tearing at my skin. I felt a sudden pounding in my head; my temples throbbed. A line of warmth emerged: the heat of my own blood oozing down my cheek. I fell to instant dizziness, a ringing in my ears. I felt my stomach turning as a reverberative rush swept over me, and then the throes of battle became audible at last. They nearly overwhelmed me, diluting my already foggy consciousness. I teetered forward, shrinking to the ground. Breathing slowly in and out, I shook my head and bat my eyes, focusing my sight and waiting for the dizziness to fade. When it had, I looked around me, searching for the source of what it was that knocked me down, certain it would lead me to Mikoto.

Far into the distance, in a grove, I glimpsed a swarm of nonexistence color whooshing through the trees. It swirled above their prickly tops in contrast to the wind, and by the eerie look of it, I understood exactly what it was. On my own, and without my marbles, I knew. "Mikoto," I said again, and took off toward the grove.

It was a miniature forest, untouched by the battle. The howling of the war began to dissipate behind me as I found myself trampling through dense thickets laden with snow and hidden turrets I fell into here and there, until at last, I came upon a clearing, drenched, battered, and out of breath.

There, I glimpsed a pair of Kings, Mikoto and Reisi, charging one another not a hundred feet away across a frozen pond. Mikoto's Sword of Damocles was surging to the ground, and before I had a chance to venture further, to breathe, or even blink, Reisi cast his saber through Mikoto's chest.