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God is kind. God is the sun, and the sun is burning—the flaming mass of rock and horror that takes Chikara’s arm off manages to cauterize the wound in the same killing blow.
It will kill him, but not yet. Not in the next eleven minutes.
He hasn’t failed yet.
Not this time. Oh, he’s failed so many times before. Failed his parents, failed his friends, failed the Union the same day that he joined them—if he hadn’t run that day, then would this all have been prevented? Could his Unmove have stopped Billy from winning? Stopped the Union from weakening? Stopped the world from ending?
Someone is screaming. It can’t be him. Chikara doesn’t have the strength to scream. Maybe it’s the Earth itself. The Sun and the Moon are waging a war but the Earth is the one to bear the burden of each and every battle.
Juiz said that it’s been born 100 times over. Does she remember? Does she remember the pain the way that Andy does, each and every time that his ability works?
Fuck, Chikara’s in so much pain.
“Eight minutes and twenty seconds left,” Juiz is saying. Chikara gags around his bile, looking up at bleary eyes. She’s charging forth with a black haired man—Victor. He’s the only one who knows what the Earth has gone through.
Chikara has wasted eight minutes and twenty-some seconds. It’s hard standing without an arm. He lilts sideways on his first attempt, collapses back on the ground, right onto the stump of his arm. Now he’s the one screaming.
The end of the world is loud enough, though. No one’s there to hear him.
He feels it though. The way his throat is tearing, the way there’s blood on his tongue. He’s pathetic. He cannot fight like Juiz and Victor, soaring streaks of brilliant black against the blinding brightness. He cannot even fight like Fuuko does, nowhere near their physical prowess but in the thick of the fray regardless. He fights by standing, and waiting, and letting someone else do the work for him.
Chikara cannot stand. So he crawls. He moves.
The grass tears out of his hands as strong arms scoop him up. “Here we go,” Shen murmurs, surprisingly quiet in the chaos. Mui keeps Chikara steady on the cloud, bracing him, letting him find his balance. “Not out of the fight yet.”
The bunny girl—Back? She’s so cold, so still—is pushed into his arm. No one tells him to protect her. Chikara holds on as best as he can regardless.
“How much longer!?” He shouts, but Shen is screaming at the sky. His voice sounds like a piercing whine and not like a voice at all. Is it because he’s dead? Is it because Chikara’s dying?
Victor roars. Chikara knows, then, that this is it. Juiz has died.
He falls off the cloud.
They’re low enough to the ground that it doesn’t hurt. Chikara can’t feel much anymore, but he doesn’t want to hurt the bunny girl. She’s not breathing but he can’t– he’s already failed everyone, he can’t fail her too.
His ankle snaps when he hits the ground. He thinks of Top. Is he still running? Will it hurt when it ends?
There’s a hole in the ground. Chikara fists the grass and drags himself there. Sweating, sobbing, spitting up blood.
Ryo, he thinks, sudden and desperate. I hope you’re well.
What would Chikara be doing now if he never joined the Union? Cowering? Regretting? Praying?
His arm hooks over the edge of the voice. “Ms. Fuuko,” he gurgles, head drooping into the abyss. He squirms until his torso is tipping forwards. Gravity does the rest of the work for him.
Chikara’s preferred method of suicide was a bullet to the brain.
That’s the one he’s imagined the most. It’s a simple fantasy. Quick, easy, painless. Cowardly—he deserved to suffer as much as his mother did, confined to her bed, every waking moment an agony up until death mercifully freed her from her pain. Thankfully, it was hard to get a gun in Japan, so he never got around to trying.
The other ways were scary. Hanging himself required skill. Overdosing ran the risk of it just not working. Chikara didn’t like pain so he didn’t want to slit his wrists.
After a gun, the next best option was jumping from the roof of his school. He was too scared of surviving the fall to try. Besides, he didn’t want his classmates to see his ugly broken body. That was shameful. Embarrassing.
It takes thirty five seconds for Chikara’s body to hit the ground. He angles himself towards God, irises searing around the unbearable heat. He does not blink. He doesn’t look away.
Don’t move, he thinks uselessly. He is in free-fall. His abilities will not activate. Don’t you dare move!
His neck cracks when he hits the table. In his peripheral vision, Fuuko disappears in a flash of light. He cannot move his head, his arm, his legs, his body. He cannot look at God as the world is consumed by fire.
Chikara lies there, paralyzed, as the table lilts to the side, and then the world is gone.
“Y’know, we don’t have to come up to the roof,” Ryo says, smiling pityingly. “You don’t have to force yourself up here.”
“I’m fine,” Chikara grits out, swallowing nervously. He hopes that his hands don’t shake around his camera. Sean and Gina look great like this, candid against the great blue sky, expressions bright and animated as they bicker and slap each other around.
Fuuko looks at him curiously. “Are you afraid of heights, Chikara?”
Chikara grimaces. “Not really.” Ryo scoffs, and Chikara glares at him out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not scared of heights! I just…”
He swallows again, suddenly sick, lowering his camera. He can’t get a good photo like this. Fuuko looks very worried. “Chikara?”
He closes his eyes. Last night, he dreamed of fire, and he woke up in a cold sweat. It’s a nightly occurrence. “I’m scared of hitting the ground.”
Even with his eyes shut, he has to brace himself against the vertigo.