#and iori seemed kind of sad that the two men he sees as his closest friends don't look at their relationship the same way

[childrenofthesun77]

With tooru awake and touma seemingly fighting on the side of the protagonists now I want iori to reveal that he didn't die but was turned into a subclass. Give me united three old idiots. Plus a vampire as the head of the tokyo branch would be fun.

(Something about the scene of sigurd going to the morgue to do something we didn't get to see seems fishy to me. What did he see when he lifted the cloth that covered iori's eyes?)

[lightchildofthespring]

The fantastic adventures of Takeru Takaishi

Chapter 2: Daughter of the revolution

On their way up the hill, Sora reminisced the times when her father took her to play hide-and-seek among the woods. She also remembered the day when she hid in a bush and overheard a group of men approaching Haruhiko. They accused him of having "subversive books" and spreading anti-government propaganda among the good people of Turtle Island. Sora was so scared that she couldn't move. She didn't do anything to stop her father from being taken away.

After her surroundings became quiet, Sora left her hiding spot and ran back to her house. It didn't take long for the little girl to notice smoke rising to the sky. Once she arrived there, she found her house burning.

Sora was about to scream in horror, but she felt a hand cover her mouth and another pull her back to the woods.

"I'm so glad you're safe! I'm so glad!"

Sora recognized her mother's voice. The arms that once restricted her were now hugging the child. The little girl was trembling and it didn't take her long to begin to cry. Toshiko turned her daughter around, so she could face her. The woman's eyes were red; a couple of tear trails were still visible.

"They took Dad! They took him away!" Sora said, among sobs.

"I know," Toshiko muttered.

"Where did they take him?" Sora asked.

New tears formed in the woman's eyes. She didn't say anything. It would take years for Sora to learn that her father was taken by Yamanaka's henchmen and dragged to the living room of her family's house as a way to lure Toshiko and the other revolutionaries to a trap. The henchmen were all armed and largely outnumbered the revolutionaries. It would be a suicide mission to try to rescue Hahuriko. Therefore, their leader decided they shouldn't do it.

Toshiko and the rest of the group survived.

Haruhiko didn't.

For the rest of her life, Sora wished to get justice for her father and revenge against Yamanaka. She cooperated with the revolutionaries but, despite knowing their reasons and understanding that her father wouldn't have wanted to be the cause of their demise, Sora could never forgive the leader of the group for that decision.

Takeru wasn't fond of the silence filling the air as they climbed the hill on the horses. Sora was leading the way, Koushiro and he were in the middle and Yamato was on the back, protecting them. From the way Yamato kept staring at Koushiro's back, Takeru assumed he still considered the stranger a threat.

Since Koushiro was the one closest to him, Takeru decided to start a conversation with that man.

"Tell me, Koushiro, where are you from?"

"I was born on Shrimp Island and lived there until I was 10 years old," Koushiro replied, not looking at Takeru.

"That's pretty close to Turtle Island!" Takeru exclaimed. "I'm not sure why, but you had given me the impression of being from somewhere far away."

"I've travelled all around the world," Koushiro told him. "But I always end up coming back to this place. I like to visit the spot where my parents' house used to be... well, not properly my parents'... the house of the couple who took care of me after..."

Koushiro stopped talking. A sad expression was visible on his face.

Suddenly, Sora stopped her horse and raised one hand, as if giving a signal. Two people carrying shotguns came from both sides of the trail: a woman with purple hair and glasses and a man with spiky dark pink hair. At least, that's what Takeru assumed his hair color to be. The woman had a red and long sleeved shirt over her brown paints; her hair was tied in a ponytail. The man had black pants and a loose blue shirt.

"Daisuke! Miyako! I need to talk to my mother immediately!" Sora told them.

"We're really sorry, Sora, but we can't let strangers into the camp. It's dangerous!" Daisuke said, pointing at Takeru and Koushiro.

"This is my little brother, his name is Takeru," Yamato introduced his brother. "The one with red hair is likely a demon from Hell. You should tie him up."

"A demon?!" Daisuke exclaimed, staring at Koushiro with amazement in his eyes. "Are you an actual demon from Hell? Can you summon Hellfire? Can you eat souls? Are you capable of seeing the future?"

"No, no, no... to tell you the truth, I'm capable of seeing fragments of the future," Koushiro answered, "but that ability is not as useful as it sounds."

"You're a clairvoyant?" Takeru asked, excitedly.

"That kind of thing doesn't exist! It's unscientific! Charlatanism!" Miyako affirmed.

"I'm not a charlatan!" Koushiro stated.

"Don't mind her, Mr. Demon," Daisuke told Koushiro, "she's the local mad scientist and can get a bit carried away sometimes about science."

"Stop shaming me for my love for science, Daisuke!" Miyako shouted. "It's the greatest thing in the world!"

"Enough with this discussion!" Sora raised her voice. "The camp is in great danger! Yamanaka's men are coming to attack us! I must talk to my mother immediately!"

Yamato looked at Sora's trembling body with concern. Despite wanting to comfort her, he knew that interrupting the woman would only make her upset. Meanwhile, Miyako and Daisuke stared at Sora in shock. They didn't remember ever seeing her lose her temper.

"That's not possible!" Miyako stated, after half a minute. "Yamanaka's men don't know where our camp is! They would never find our location, unless someone told them!"

"You can't mean that there's a traitor among us..." Daisuke said.

"I don't know how it's going to happen, but I saw armed men walking up this hill amidst darkness," Koushiro told them. "That's why I warned Miss Sora."

"Why exactly should we believe you, stranger?" Miyako asked. "As far as I can tell, you're nothing more than a charlatan trying to deceive people!"

Koushiro sighed, frustrated.

"Fine, don't believe me! I'm used to that," he said. "Just tie me up already and drag me to the tent where you keep the weird looking mechanical box. I can't wait to see you yelling at the boy with green eyes and short black hair to stop meddling with your invention."

"How do you know all that?" Miyako inquired. Then, a bigger concern took over her mind. "Hold on, Iori is doing what?!"

"I can't waste more time with this!" Sora snapped, making her horse run towards the top of the hill. Yamato followed her on his horse.

"How dramatic!" Takeru murmured to himself. He was about to follow them, but Daisuke pointed the shotgun at him.

"The two of you will have to get down from the horses and let us tie your hands and blindfold you," he said.

"What? But I'm Yamato's brother!" Takeru protested. "Doesn't that make me trustworthy?"

"Well... you're not dressed as someone we could trust," Daisuke told him.

"How dare you? I'm wearing the finest and most expensive clothes you've probably seen in your whole lives!" Takeru was getting exasperated.

"That's precisely the issue!" Miyako was getting angry as well. "Do you understand that we're revolutionaries and you look like someone wealthy?"

"So... does being a revolutionary make you hate people with good taste in clothes?" Takeru asked.

Miyako and Daisuke were left speechless after Takeru's remark, not quite understanding how someone could say something so stupid.

Koushiro got down from the horse and put his hands up. He glanced at Takeru and told him:

"Mr. Takeru, with the due respect, please stop saying things without thinking first."

"W-What are you trying to say?" Takeru asked.

"I think he just called you out for saying something dumb... in a very polite way," Daisuke told him.

Takeru's world was shaken by that affirmation. Dumb? Him? But he was such an educated person! But... what if he was dumb? Had he actually been dumb for his entire life? Did he live a lie for all those years? He felt as if his head was spinning and lost his balance, which made him fall from the horse. Luckily for Takeru, he fell on Koushiro.

Koushiro wasn't very lucky as he was knocked to the ground by Takeru's weight.

"Didn't see that coming, did you, Mr. Psychic Demon?" Miyako mocked.

After that, she and Daisuke proceeded to tie and blindfold the two strangers.

Once Sora arrived at the camp, she jumped from the horse and headed to her mother's tent with large steps. Some revolutionaries, who were sitting on logs and cleaning their weapons, seemed surprised at her sudden arrival, but didn't pay her too much attention.

Yamato arrived right after her. He quickly got down from his horse and ran in Sora's direction.

"Sora, please! What are you going to say to her?" Yamato inquired, putting himself in her front. "You can't expect Leader Toshiko to believe that a demon dug himself out of the dirt and told you about a vision he had! I mean... do we even have any actual reason to believe that guy, anyway?"

"I don't know if he's telling the truth or not, but we can't risk our people's safety!" Sora retorted. "I'm not going to let Yamanaka take anyone away again!"

"Sora, I understand-" Yamato began to say.

"No, you don't! Your whole family is alive, you can't understand!" Sora shouted, pushing him out of her way.

Astonished by her uncharacteristically rude behavior, Yamato was unable to move for a few seconds. Once he recovered, he made his way to the tent in the middle of the camp. Inside it, he found Sora staring down at her mother, who was tending to a flower arrangement on the ground, while kneeling on a pillow. There were several other flower arrangements in the tent, among maps, books and weapons. The woman was wearing dark pants and a white buttoned shirt that gave her an air of elegance.

"You haven't come to see me in a while, Sora. And now, without any warning, you interrupt me while I'm with the flowers..." Toshiko commented.

"There's something more important than your flowers that we must discuss!" Sora told her. "Old man Yamanaka's men are coming to the camp! We have to evacuate!"

Toshiko paled after hearing that. She stood up and approached her daughter. Sora felt uncomfortable under that intense gaze, but didn't look away.

"Who told you that?" Toshiko inquired.

"That's not important!" Sora said.

"The only way for those people to find our location is if there's a traitor among us, which is something I can't bring myself to believe," Toshiko told her. "You'd better give me the source of that information if you expect me to take it seriously."

Sora felt her eyes getting warm and her body trembling. She wasn't surprised that her mother didn't listen to her, but that still hurt.

"Then, you need a reliable source to act to protect the group?" Sora questioned. "If you really cared about anyone, the mere possibility of them being in danger should be enough!"

"Sora, don't disrespect me!" Toshiko scolded her. "I care very deeply about-"

"You didn't even care about Dad!" Sora accused, letting a couple of tears escape her eyes.

Toshiko was taken aback by that. Without uttering a word, she watched as Sora stormed out of the tent, being followed by Yamato. Only when she was alone, she allowed herself to cry, like she had always done ever since the day when she lost her husband.

Out of the tent, Sora stumbled on something and nearly fell. Yamato embraced her from behind just in time. He didn't tell her anything. Yamato knew when Sora needed his words and that wasn't one of those moments. She turned to him and wrapped the man in her arms, burying her face on his shoulder. Yamato kept a hand on her back and caressed her hair with another. He would let her cry as much as she needed.

While Sora and Yamato were with Toshiko, Takeru and Koushiro arrived at the camp, after being guided by Miyako while Daisuke led the horses. Once they arrived, the pieces of fabric covering their eyes were removed. Takeru wasn't impressed by the amount of twenty dirty tents or the small group of people wearing cheap clothes. But what did he know? He was an ignorant, after all! Maybe that was the highest fashion among the revolutionaries and he just wasn't intelligent enough to appreciate it!

"Iori Hida, you better come out at this second or may the Goddess help me!" Miyako called.

A teenager with greens eyes and black hair came out of one of the tents. He was carrying a large mechanical black box, which had several small gears moving on its sides.

"You really are meddling with my invention!" Miyako accused.

"It wasn't working properly," Iori said. "I thought I could fix it if I took a better look-"

"Iori, you shouldn't touch other people's inventions without permission!" Miyako scolded him.

"It's not just your invention! I helped too!" Iori said.

"You just assisted me in the manufacture! I was the one who designed it and named it!" Miyako retorted.

"If it doesn't work, you didn't do a very good job, Miyako," Daisuke remarked.

"Hey, you're the last person that can criticize the Smokenator, Daisuke! You've never invented anything in your life!" Miyako shouted. Then, she grabbed the box and tried to pull it from Iori's hands, but he didn't want to give it to her.

"Stop it! I haven't finished fixing the Night Bringer yet!" Iori said, refusing to let go of the box.

"Stop trying to rename the Smokenator!" Miyako said back, putting more force in her grip.

"I find both of those names silly..." Takeru murmured, "but I'm nothing more than an ignorant simpleton who knows nothing of the world!"

"Mr. Takeru, you don't have to say that about yourself. You're clever!" Koushiro tried to cheer him up.

"You were the one who called me dumb!" Takeru accused.

"I never said that!" Koushiro defended himself. "I simply advised you to think more before saying things. I can tell you by experience that offending the wrong person can lead to terrible consequences. I didn't want you to repeat my mistakes."

"Your mistakes?" Takeru asked. "Are you saying that the reason why you die so much is that you keep saying dumb things to people?"

"I'm not going to deny that many of my deaths are tied to people not appreciating what I had to say... even if I was trying to help them..." Koushiro said in a sad tone. "But before all that, I offended someone very dangerous... in consequence I was cursed with the clairvoyance..."

"Cursed? But that's such a fascinating ability!" Takeru contested.

For a moment, it was as if the light had completely vanished from Koushiro's eyes, as if he had gotten lost in painful thoughts.

"It's not fascinating to see tragedies before they happen..." Koushiro had a cold tone, "it's not fascinating to try everything to stop those tragedies... to save people... and then watching them die anyway... unable to change anything..."

Takeru wasn't sure of what to think after their conversation took such a dark turn. Thankfully for him (but not for anyone else), the sudden eruption of black smoke from the mechanical box Miyako and Iori had been fighting over distracted him from the awkward situation Koushiro had created. The black smoke rose to the sky quickly and began to spread in high speed. Despite being the middle of the day, the darkness befalling them made it seem like night had arrived.

"Iori, what did you do?!" Miyako questioned, letting go of the box.

"Don't act as if I was the only one in fault for this!" Iori stood up for himself.

"The entire island is going to see this smoke!" Daisuke said. "Everybody is going to know our location now!"

"What's going on here?!" Yamato inquired, running in their direction alongside Sora. He saw Iori still holding the box from which the smoke was coming. "Iori, what did you do?!"

"Hey, don't criticize Iori!" Miyako defended the teenager. "A farmer like you can't understand the passion of a scientist!"

Sora hurried to untie Takeru and Koushiro. Right after that, she grabbed the red-haired young man by the shoulders and inquired:

"Is this the 'darkness' you saw? Are Yamanaka's men coming?"

"I think so..." Koushiro murmured.

"You think so?!" Yamato snapped. "Are you a clairvoyant or not?! Give us a straight answer! Tells us what will happen next!"

"I can only see fragments of the future!" Koushiro explained. "I can't control this ability!"

"Brother, leave him alone!" Takeru pleaded. "Koushiro is just trying to help! He might not know everything and not understand the intricacies of certain social rules or why some people don't appreciate fine clothes!"

"Is he still talking about Mr. Demon?" Daisuke wondered.

"But the point is that he's trying his best to help!" Takeru continued. "He might make mistakes and say dumb things sometimes, but he's trying to improve himself and do better! Isn't that worthy something?"

"I think I'm not understanding the context here," Yamato said. "What on Earth happened after I went after Sora?"

"Sora, what happened here?" Toshiko questioned, running in her daughter's direction. "This smoke is giving away our location! The camp can be attacked! Yamanaka's henchmen outnumber us! They have better equipment and more munition! In our current state, we can't outfight them!"

For a moment, Sora wanted to say spiteful things to her mother. But the desperation on Toshiko's face made her hesitate. Her previous words of accusation towards Toshiko, fueled by the pain caused by the loss of her father, seemed cruel and stupid on retrospect. It couldn't be more evident that her mother had always worried about the safety of her people.

"We just need to make sure that everybody escape to the tunnels before they get here," Sora said, letting go of Koushiro and turning to her mother. "Let's reunite our best shooters! I can lead the offensive and buy you enough time-"

"Sora, no!" Toshiko interrupted. "You have to escape too! I will stay back and fight them off!"

"Are you out of your mind?!" Sora questioned. "You'll die if you do that! I have to stay and help you!"

"This is an order, Sora! You'll leave!" Toshiko insisted.

"I'm not going to run!" Sora stated. "I'm not going to turn my back on other people and leave them to die!"

For the first time in many years, Sora saw tears in Toshiko's eyes.

"Back then, the thing that I wanted the most was to save Haruhiko or die trying. But I couldn't do that... and it wasn't just for the sake of the group..." Toshiko told her daughter. "If I had tried to save Haruhiko, both your father and I would've died. And then, you'd be left alone to fend for yourself... those horrible men wouldn't show mercy to a little kid... you might hate me for that decision, Sora. It's alright, I hate myself for it as well. But I don't regret choosing to protect you. I'll keep choosing you above everything and everyone, for as long as I live. So, please, don't throw your life away!"

Sora could feel her eyes getting flooded with tears. She almost didn't recognize the warmth and lightness taking over her heart. They were reminiscent of happier times, when her family was together. Those feelings made her realize that, despite respecting her mother's love for her, she still couldn't abandon the woman. Sora wasn't willing to lose the rest of her family.

"OH MY GODDESS!" Takeru suddenly shouted, startling everybody who was enthralled by the touching moment Sora and Toshiko were sharing. "I JUST HAD THE MOST AMAZING IDEA THAT IS GOING TO SAVE EVERYBODY! IT'S SUCH AN INTELLIGENT PLAN! I'M SO INTELLIGENT! HOW COULD I EVER THINK I WAS DUMB?!"

"Wait, did you seriously just come up with an idea that is going to save everybody?" Miyako asked in a skeptical tone.

"Yes, I did, Miss Mad Scientist!" Takeru interjected, pointing his finger dramatically towards the dark sky. "But before I begin to explain my brilliant plan, tell me, do you have any other interesting invention?"

"Oh! Are you asking me if I have other interesting inventions?" Miyako grinned. "I do! I really do! Just you wait to see them!"

"Now, you're sounding like an evil scientist, Miyako!" Daisuke commented.

"Be quiet, Daisuke!" Miyako retorted.

"Hey, Daisuke!" a young woman with light pink hair approached him. Several other revolutionaries were surrounding the group. "Care to explain what's going on to the rest of us?"

"Honestly, Jun, weren't you paying attention?" Daisuke asked.

"We have been paying attention!" another young woman, with short curly blond hair and glasses, said. "But we still need an explanation! We don't even know who that class traitor claiming to have a brilliant plan is!"

"Who are you calling a class traitor?!" Takeru inquired.

Koushiro found the discussion funny. It felt strange to laugh after such a long time, even if he was trying to muffle it. That heartwarming feeling, however, didn't last long.

He suddenly saw himself in a large living room. In front of him, there was an old skinny man looking through a large window. Through ot, the black smoke covering the hill was visible at the horizon.

"Tell me, Monk..." the old man spoke in a husky voice, "is it really wise to send all my forces after the revolutionaries?"

"I can protect you by myself, you have nothing to worry about."

Koushiro knew that voice too well. In other times, nothing would make him happier than to listen to that person, especially when he was laughing. At that moment, however, all that voice did was to confirm his dreadful suspicions.

"What is a holy man like you doing on Turtle Island?" the old man inquired, turning to his right. There, the person in the monk clothes was leaning against a wall. He was smiling at the other, but that smile wasn't like the ones he used to show Koushiro. There was no shred of joy left on that face. The top of the monk's head was covered by a black hood, but Koushiro could still see some strings of that person's large brown hair coming out.

In those distant times, that person would never hide his hair.

"Well, you know..." the monk smirked, "nothing much... just waiting for an old friend."

His sight began to turn dark, indicating that the vision was ending. Koushiro was once again in the revolutionary camp. Takeru was still discussing something with the revolutionaries, but Koushiro wasn't paying attention anymore. His mind wandered through memories of their last meetings, which all ended with his best friend asking him the same thing:

"Please, stay dead this time."