Atlus owns all of us, we just don't know it. I ain't own nothin' but a handful of fanwank. I write these for my wife. Special thanks to user EmmyChao, and everyone who's ever posted a review on one of these. You guys are the tops.

"After the end" stories are meant to largely stand alone (some more than others) but all of them feed into a larger story...

...A larger story which may or may not be told. This piece wasn't supposed to go up next; I've been holding it back since before the holidays, so that I could finish one that belongs in between them. But things out in the "real world" are pretty busy right now, and I can't promise how quickly I'll be getting back to these stories, if I do so at all. I do hope to, but one of the main reasons I did this as a series of short stories, rather than a long multi-chapter epic, was so that I could bail out at any time if I needed to without much guilt. Unfortunately, the level of continuity seems to have grown quite out of hand.

I'm posting this now, because there's little reason to hold it back, but it's not a very satisfying ending. Hopefully one day I'll have time to get back and provide you all with and ending you deserve, but the world of fan fiction is full of empty promises - and so I won't be making one.

In the next year, there may be work from me out of the realm of fandom, and I hope that if you've enjoyed my writing, that you will follow me there if it comes to fruition. If not, I remain forever grateful for your support and comments over the months.

Once more, now, with feeling...

(Marking Time, Waiting for...)

Everyone sat in the dormitory lounge, looking for something to say.

Koromaru had trotted off with Mitsuru and Akihiko. That wasn't that strange, really. The dog had loved Shinjiro Aragaki as much or more than just about everyone. Nobody had ever seen such a weight reflected in an animal's face before. Aigis had whispered into his ear briefly, and then the two senpai had left with the dog in tow.

They were going to take care of the body. Nobody else had the guts, or the presumption, to go along with them. Junpei had cast one look towards Minato, who'd slowly shaken his head, and they'd watched them go.

Ken hadn't come back, yet. Everything had happened so fast, that nobody had yet gone to look for him. Minato didn't seem too worried, so they chose not to be, either. But then, Minato didn't look to be much of anything but tired. He kept zoning off, staring at patterns in the wallpaper for long periods of time. It wasn't like how he faded out in the lobby of Tartarus; it was just a slow shutdown of... caring, maybe. It had been his first failure. Yukari kept casting him glances, but didn't go to him.

Finally, Fuuka said something about a strong headache and wandered out of the lounge. It was only the original three members of the Tartarus Exploration Team, and Aigis, who seemed a little confused. The air felt thick.

"I could... go get some drinks from the machine upstairs." Junpei took off his cap and scratched at his head. The others didn't seem to excited by the idea. "You know what, nevermind..."

Aigis slowly loped over with her awkward gait and sat down in one of the chairs. She so rarely bothered to sit down when she didn't have to that the others turned out of habit to look. She smoothed out the skirt of her school uniform and frowned slightly.

"Permit me to ask a question." Yukari was already wincing and rolling her eyes, but the boys each nodded slowly. "Shinjiro-san left his usual body armor, axe, and other equipment here at the dormitory building when he went to the arranged meeting behind the station. Given his awareness of Ken's anger, does this not mean that he wished to die?"

Junpei gaped, and Yukari reared back as if to slap the android, but Minato spoke before she could get the chance.

"I... can't accept that, Aigis." Minato looked... he looked dry, like he was being slowly mummified before them. He spoke haltingly, and unsure. "I... I understand why you say that. But I can't accept it. I refuse to believe that people want death."

Yukari slumped. "Minato-kun..."

"No." He shook his head. "Death is... it's too big. I won't accept it. He... he didn't know what he really wanted. I refuse to believe that you all... I..." His face cracked. "I'm... going to my room." He stood, and his hands hung limply, out of his pockets, as he walked up the stairs.

"What was that about?" Junpei looked to Yukari, who was shaking her head. Neither of them saw Aigis's face, as she attempted to process the reaction of the boy she had sworn to protect. Facts lined up ever so briefly, seemed to route towards corrupted memory cells, and then collapsed into fault errors and stack overflows. She couldn't understand what she was thinking, which was an unusual feeling for an artificial intelligence. It was as if there was a truth there, just out of reach.

Not even Aigis understood why she felt so drawn to Minato Arisato. She felt as if there was a great Answer to her existence, and if she could only see it, those long-damaged parts of herself might reawaken. Perhaps then, she naively believed, she might be worthy of his attention.

Minato made it up to his room, shut the door, and then the tears came. His body shook, and he ripped the calendar from his wall, throwing it across the small dorm room in impotent fury before collapsing to his bed. He was asleep before he realized what was happening. He had no way of framing his guilt and his grief for others to understand. All the worse because some part of him had known that this outcome had been inevitable from the beginning. Like Shinjiro's life was an arrow fired from long ago, and it had only just now struck home.

Shinjiro reeled back as the bullet hit. It felt less like a pierce, and more like an explosion—the result of a silver pocketwatch shattering upon impact. Even as he flew backwards the realization came to him, and then, oddly, the beginnings of a joke. Having more time, killing time... something-something. Hamuko would be able to figure out the right wordplay, she was the clever one.

The watch didn't stop the bullet, Takaya's pistol was a very high caliber and the shot came from a very close range, but it slowed the bullet considerably. Of course, now there was also the shrapnel, pieces of silver tearing into him... his wild hair, Miki had always called him a werewolf. And then he cracked his head pretty hard when he landed.

What caused the coma, exactly? The doctors weren't one hundred percent sure. The trauma of surgery—it took some time to get him operated on, as the gunshot occurred during the Dark Hour—or perhaps their painkillers conflicted with whatever had been in his body, that the toxicology report could not identify. They didn't know anything about Kirijo Group suppressant drugs, they didn't even see what Chidori was popping into her mouth whenever the doctors leaved her alone. An argument was made, however, that the brain was just choosing not to respond. People had to fight to live, after major trauma, and it seemed as though Shinjiro was choosing not to fight at all.

Shinjiro was in his usual place, loitering by the back door, when Minato found him. He always looked ready to bolt out that door when everyone turned their backs. Minato didn't like it, especially, but he hadn't found a way to connect with Shinjiro, not yet. The older boy seemed unusually perceptive, calling Minato on his frequent silences, things like that. He fought well for SEES, but he didn't seem interested in opening up. Compared to the many social links that Minato had formed, Shinjiro Aragaki was a logic problem that he hadn't been able to solve.

"Tomorrow's the big day." Shinjiro crossed his arms and looked at the younger leader. "You ready?"

Minato nodded, and Shinjiro clucked his tongue. When the leader of SEES turned to walk away, though, Shinji frowned. "Hey." The boy turned. "What are you going to do, when this is all over?"

The boy's eyes were hidden behind that damned hair again. He mumbled, "I hadn't really thought about it." But then he looked up, searching. "How about you?"

"Tch. Never mind." Shinji turned away. He wouldn't have to deal with this for much longer.

Hamuko wrapped Shinjiro's fingers around the pocket watch. He stared at her, and she just smiled, like she always did.

The smile was half-bullshit most of the time, and he knew it. These people couldn't use the toilet without asking for her orders, and yet not a one of them stopped to ask how she was doing. Kirijo, the idiot in the baseball cap, even Akihiko, who was leading her around by the nose and didn't even realize it. She had come to him, asked him what to do about Aki, and it had made him want to laugh.

Shinji wasn't the sort of person who'd deliberately steal a woman from his best friend, but things were progressing so quickly that not even he had realized what was going on until he was wrapped around her finger. What had he endured for her sake? Wearing a tuxedo into Tartarus, that had probably been the worst of it. Some long-dormant part of him had been flattered, yeah, and felt warmed by it. But then he'd seen that she'd wheedled the rest of the guys into doing the same thing, and Takeba had slapped a wad of yen into her hand.

He tried not to think about most of it too much, or he'd crack. He already saw how Ken followed her around, all but floating in the air. The damned kid was going to break her heart when she found out about why he'd signed on in the first place. Tomorrow. That was going to be the day. And if Ken was going to break her heart, what was he going to do to her?

Better to pretend that they didn't give each other the same looks across the dorm room lounge. Better to keep hiding by the exit, in the dark, where the others couldn't see him watch her every move. Better to get tomorrow over with, so that the guilt would leave him alone.

He'd forced his way into the building, and then forced his way into SEES, and part of him wasn't even sure why he'd done it. Certainly Mitsuru always viewed him with suspicion.

In the old days, he knew, in the orphanage—he and Akihiko had been experiencing the same thing, and they'd both been too afraid to speak to the other. The change that the world would take on at midnight, when every liquid became thick, tarry blood and the other kids would become coffins. They didn't know what caused the change, or how it worked—they'd each pretend to be asleep, shivering under scratchy blankets, and so they couldn't be sure that the other person was also seeing it. Later, they figured it out together, and they'd both stand guard at Miki's coffin, worried that things would come out of the darkness.

Things did come, but not until later. They didn't see their first Shadow, either of them, until after the fire.

Why did Mitsuru Kirijo come for Akihiko, and not for him? It had rankled. They had been separated before, but not by something like this. So, Shinjiro figured he'd take care of it himself. Pencil-neck Ikutski just buckled to him, and he moved in across the hall from Aki.

When they showed him how to wake his Persona up and have it fight for him, the power was at first intoxicating, then quickly terrifying. Castor was full of rage, seemed to drag him around under its own will. The headaches started then, but he kept them secret.

Eventually, Kirijo turned out to be... well, not that bad, anyway. And Aki had such a crush on her, forget what he said. They were all together just long enough to get... comfortable.

And then he screwed it up for all three of them.

Hamuko sat down next to the hospital bed. She was determined not to cry.

"I tried to think of something that you'd actually appreciate." She rubbed at her nose. "Or, at least, that you'd admit to appreciating." This was the first day since Shinjiro had been admitted to the hospital that she'd been able to get some time alone. Akihiko was there constantly; which was understandable, but she'd wanted, needed, time alone with him. "I figured that if I did things like read to you, or tell you about funny stuff that happened at the dorm, you'd probably roll your eyes at me." She sighed. "If you could. I'm probably going to do that stuff anyway—you can't stop me, after all—but, just this first time, I really wanted to..."

She took a deep breath. This wasn't "hard," this was agonizing. It was so unfair. And she knew damned well what the end of the story was. Even if he woke up... how much longer did he have? Hamuko didn't know. It could be ten years, but it probably wasn't. It probably wasn't one year.

"Yeah, so..." She unwrapped the parcel that she'd brought in. "I tried to think of what you'd appreciate. Like I said. And then I realized that I wasn't exactly sure what we had in common. Doesn't that sound stupid? After all of this time. Knowing how we feel. We both like cooking... and we both have a thing for exotic coffee... but, well, not much that I can do with that in the hospital, huh?" She placed the unwrapped box in her lap. "You knew all of this already, I know. You tried to get me to see it. Thing is, you didn't expect me to be so stubborn, did you?"

She opened the box and took out an MP3 player of the same model of her own, in a burnished silver. "Stubborn, and resourceful. See, that's what I figured out, while I was worrying about all of this. What did it meeeaaan, you know?" She clipped the headphones over his ears. "We have more in common than you think, Shinji. I know..." She sniffed, just a little. "I know we don't have that much time. You've pounded it into my head over and over. But I've met a lot of people this year. And... it's like they've all been teaching me the same lesson."

She fumbled a little with the player's controls. "You're such a meathead. You think we couldn't figure out what you were doing at that club? Like I wouldn't have gone with you in an instant. Big macho jerk." She turned the player on—it was full of pre-purchased songs: the collected discography of Risette. "Every one of them, Shinji... They've been teaching me to accept that people have to go. But... you don't have to go yet." She wiped at her eyes and stood up. "I'm going to be here when you wake up. I promise."

...I hear a voice that causes me to not give up
And go on all sort of paths

You hear a voice that causes your heart to say stay by my side
So that we can catch hold of our dreams

We've never noticed it, our dreams are within our reality
When we finally did, we had already become adults

As we pursued our hopes and dreams, there were many sad moments
But we overcame it all and managed to smile...

In his coma, Shinjiro Aragaki experienced many things. Many overlapped, and there's not much to be said for chronology in a fever dream, but if there was a "first," then it was probably memories.

Shinji remembered his first meeting with Strega. It happened in the obvious place; Shinji was perched on top of the railing behind the Port Island Station, sharing a smoke with some idiot punks by the Mahjong place. It was the rare instance when Jin and Chidori had come out separately from Takaya (who was, apparently, in his own drug fugue that night).

Jin was looking for something, or someone. Chidori, as would become the usual, didn't seem to care where she was or what she was doing. Shinji knew that look on girl's faces, he'd seen it at the orphanage and he'd seen it since then. Some part of him wanted to slam Jin into a trash can and make Chidori go get help... but he had a hard time caring about much of anything at that point.

Someone pulled a knife on Chidori, and she looked at it blankly. Jin shortly broke the idiot's arm and scraped his face against a brick wall. Shinjiro didn't care about that. He did, however, sit up slightly so that he could ask the girl a question.

"You're not afraid of dyin', are you?"

It was so matter of fact that Chidori actually bothered to answer him, in an equally even tone. "I have known the day that I would die all my life." She was so serious, and there was something lucid in her eyes, then.

"How?" And it was clear to Jin and Chidori both that he wanted that same ability. Jin nodded to her, and she answered him.

"Medea told me."

And that was how he understood that they were Persona users. He would follow them around, when he could, but it wasn't long before Jin had convinced Takaya that Shinjiro was worth paying attention to. The creepy shirtless bastard studied his face, and agreed to let Jin give him some suppressants. Like manna. And as is the standard, the first hit was free. After that, he became their errand boy—when they remembered that he existed.

Sometimes, in the coma, Shinjiro would remember things that had not happened. Instead of Hamuko, there was a shifty boy with dark hair, one who walked around with a lazy slouch and kept curled inward even as the women began following after him one by one.

The first time they met, in this dream, Shinjiro stared at the boy, and seemed to find him familiar. The boy made Castor pound against the walls within his own head. It wasn't until the very end, when he was bleeding out and the others arrived too little too late, that he saw what made the boy so familiar. Minato Arisato was death Himself.

What did he see and understand in that moment? Did he get an early glimpse of Ryoji Mochizuki, the Arbiter of Nyx? Did he see the little boy Pharos, sitting on the railing and kicking his legs? Or did he just see a teenager who watched Shinji die slowly, in inches, with a passive look and a dark, deep well within his eyes?

Shinjiro considered Chidori a kindred spirit. The girl, for her part, barely noticed him. These things stayed the same on both sides of the coin. The past remained the same, too; the fire, the bad foster parents, the time on the streets, the collapsed house and the death glare of Ken Amada. It was only Hamuko that was different, and Shinji never saw that the same death resided within her as well. He probably would have found it funny.

No, there was a brief period when he thought that maybe he had feelings for Chidori. Then he realized how irritating he found that placid tone and resigned stare. It was too much like his own, even though she had the comforting knowledge that he lacked. No, he didn't want her, he just wanted to be her, even if she was surrounded by ugly vicious scumbags. He was long past caring anymore.

Akihiko kept sniffing him out, kept visiting him again and again. At first it was awkward, then it made him angry, and then it became such habit that he stopped questioning it. Right about then, that final turn, was when Aki started asking for him to come back.

Sometimes, in the coma, Shinjiro would be someplace else, watching things that he couldn't know, couldn't have sensed or understood. It was these moments, when he knew that he was finally dying.

One time, he was in a library, at a different high school. Ice covered the walls, thick crunchy snow was piled up in mounds all over the floor. And three students were burning books.

Hidehiko "Brown" Uesugi was pulling pages from a stack of old hardcovers and tossing them into the metal trash can where the fire raged. He shivered. Nothing seemed to work the chill out of his body, but still he fed the meager little bonfire—if nothing else, it kept his hands busy. Yukino kept looking at him, and he knew that she probably objected to he and Yuka burning the books, but she was too tired and hungry to object. "Where," he finally asked, "Did Elly go?"

Yukino shrugged. When they were on the move, Yukino was a pretty damned incredible leader, he had to admit; she gave the demons no quarter, and they'd already taken on that first tower within the malformed school well under the cosmic time limit. But the minute they stopped to rest, she started to shut down. It was Ms. Saeko. Yukino loved the teacher—they all did, but Yukino more than anyone—and they were all beginning to despair of ever rescuing her.

The big question on everyone's minds, of course, was who dug the damned mask out of storage and screwed this thing up in the first place? Everything was bad enough with the demons on the loose, before this thing started. Nothing made a damned bit of sense.

Nobody knew what had happened to Mark and Kei and the others, either—Hidehiko had seen them last, when they'd busted he and Masao Inaba both out of the twisted police station. He'd barely made it inside the school before the ice had begun crawling up the walls.

Devil-Boy was shredding paper gleefully and sprinkling it into the fire like confetti. Yuka had been quiet lately. They all were probably hoping that she was thinking about what had happened in the cafeteria, but more likely she was gearing up for an epic whining fit. When even Brown thought you were being immature, that had to say something.

Elly finally returned, and she had a small plastic bag full of drugs from that whacko shop that had appeared elsewhere in the building. Her sword was freshly bloody, which means she'd had to fight on her way back. She just shook her head-"I don't want to talk about it"-and sat next to Yukino. They both looked at the door set into one wall of the library. It led to the next tower.

"Can we rest a little longer?" Yuka only whispered it.

"No," said Elly.

"Yes," said Yukino. So they rested a little longer.

Brown crinkled his nose a little. They... none of them really liked each other. The group outside, considering it had Kei and Mark on the same team, couldn't be much better off. It didn't seem fair—stuff like this was supposed to make you bond together, right?

Finally, Yukino spoke up. "You know... if Ms. Saeko wasn't in danger... I don't know if I could do this. I think I would have just..." She didn't finish the thought. Finally, Elly shook her head.

"Honestly. It's not as bad as all that." Yuka looked ready to explode at that, but Hidehiko just grabbed her shoulder and shook his head. He was too damned tired for bad jokes, even. Having Yuka lose it would only set him off. "I know, I know... everything's frightfully miserable. But consider, for a moment, how much worse off we could be. We have power. Our Personas enable us to help. Everything that's happened, it could have happened without Mister Mysterious Butterfly stepping in, you know? And besides that..." She leaned back. "Besides that, we're doing things that nobody has ever done before. They may not be pleasant, and I might never sleep a full night again in my life, but... I refuse to have regrets."

"Damn." Brown shook his head. Yukino wrapped one arm around Elly and hugged her close. Devil-Boy tossed a Bible in the barrel and giggled a little... Brown socked him on the arm, hard enough to send him scurrying off to the opposite corner.

When they stood before Nyx and raised their finger, Shinjiro was there with both of them, on death's door. "All right," he said, "Let's do this."

"You're a grumpy Gus." Hamuko leaned down to look up into Shinji's face. He glowered at her, and she just giggled.

"I'm dressed like a damned butler." He stuck one finger in his collar and tried to loosen it.

They were both standing just outside of the access point. Nobody was sure, exactly, what the Hell those portals in Tartarus were supposed to be, or perhaps better why they were there—who was supposed to use them? But then, nothing made sense in Tartarus.

Junpei and Akihiko had already slipped through the gateway, and were no doubt pulling off their ties down in the lobby. Hamuko, though, was standing in front of the access point and blocking Shinjiro's exit. "When you look at me like that," he mumbled, "you look just like Hamtaro."

She pouted. "Why do people keep saying that? Everyone always says that!" She crossed her arms. "Fuuka?"

Soft, lilting music filled their heads. It was Fuuka's newest pet project, providing some musical accompaniment to their exploratory trips into the tower. Sometimes it was over the radio, and sometimes her enjoyment of the music just seemed to drift right into their own minds. It had been a trial and error process, figuring out what kept them energetic during battle without distracting them. Mitsuru had wanted to complain—but then, their leader had headphones dangling from her neck even when facing off against a floor guardian, or one of the giant Shadows that emerged during the full moon.

This, though, was different, a classical waltz, and Shinjiro winced as Hamuko held out her hands.

"I don't dance."

"Tch. Idiot," she said in his own voice. "All guys say that, and they're all full of crap. C'mon, this was the only way that I could get you dressed up without the guys giving you a hard time. Fair is fair. If you do it in the tower, where Shadows can kill us, you can pretend it's macho, right?"

He hung his head and placed his hands in hers. She pulled him close.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you how to do this?"

They actually had held a dance, once, at the orphanage. The boys and girls were too embarrassed to look at each other, mostly. They'd just been kids. Except. As Hamuko pulled him and pushed him across the floor in the haunted tower, until he started to pick up the steps on his own (be aware of your own body, Kido-sensei had told them), he remembered that he had danced with a girl that day. Miki had stood on his feet, and he'd swung her around in great, loping strides, making her laugh. Akihiko pretended to get jealous, which made her laugh harder.

"Don't get that faraway look." She pulled his chin down. "Look at me. Pretend like you're enjoying this." He had no way, in his language, to tell her that he was enjoying it. She pressed her face against the front of his suit as he spun, and pretty soon he buckled under pressure and tried basic things that he'd seen on television, like twirling her (she did most of the work) and finally, dipping her low in his strong arms.

It would have been romantic, and they would likely have kissed, if Fuuka's voice didn't cut in, seeming to reverberate up and down the halls.

"I sense death."

Hamuko groaned. "It was fun while it lasted." They separated quickly, and she waved him on. "Let's go."

But when she stepped into the portal, Shinjiro lingered. The stale air in the tower grew colder and colder, and Shinji could almost picture ice slowly snaking its way up the walls. And then they were looking at each other.

The massive Reaper and Shinjiro had a long staredown. The personification of death itself seemed to hesitate, at the glare from the teenager. And then Shinji waved and stepped into the portal, even as the Reaper began to raise its weapon. Neither of them seemed bothered; they'd meet again very soon.

In his coma, Shinji imagined himself walking through an infinite expanse of white. This bit seemed rather predictable, really, although he didn't expect to bump into three people sitting at a card table when he did so.

He wasn't sure that he wanted to be around other people, and so he hesitated. But there was literally nothing else in existence, as far as he could tell, and so finally he let his shoulders slump and walk closer.

It was two adult men and a girl something like his own age. After a moment of panic, he saw that it was not a girl that he knew. This made it easier to get closer. One of them, a pale-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes, looked irritated and kept glancing at his watch.

In an alternate reality Mikage-Cho, people were also playing cards.

The only girl in the group of five was asleep, sprawled out in the lap of their leader, who was silently looking at his cards. The boy in the yellow stocking cap was looking at them both with a mixture of emotions. Jealousy, regret, anger, resignation? Masao "Mark" Inaba didn't know how to feel.

The Historical Society building was free of demons, and so they'd decided to rest up. The Expel Mirror, which they'd already looted and shoved into a backpack, lay beside Kei Nanjou. Despite needing the rest, nobody seemed willing to sleep, and so Reiji Kido had pulled out his deck of cards. When even Kei had agreed that it would probably take their minds off of things, all of the yen had been dumped into a pile at their feet and divvied up. Currently, Reiji had about half of everyone's original kitties, and Masao was sure that he was cheating. But honestly, what did it matter, anymore?

Kei glanced at the backpack. "It's a shame, that we can't glance into this mirror and see the other world." Ever since Yamaoka had died, he'd occasionally let slip with these little philosophical comments. "To think that the Many Worlds Interpretation could be accurate... does our every choice provide another world somewhere?" Meaning, were there worlds where his butler was still alive? Kei hadn't appreciated the man who had all but raised him until it was too late. Masao wanted to joke about that, but didn't, because he'd been worried about his mother since this had all started.

"Ain't no sense worryin' about stuff like that." Reiji tossed in a card and drew its replacement. "Only matters what you do now." Their leader nodded his head slightly in agreement and held up two fingers. Reiji dealt him a pair of cards.

"I'm not implying otherwise, in a practical sense." Kei kept the cards in his hand. "I just think that it's cause for reflection." Masao snorted at the inadvertent pun, and Kei glared. "I don't think that it makes your actions lack value. Quite the opposite." He waited for Mark to drop three cards and take three more, and then continued. "More than that, though... Picture if, when you woke up in the morning, the face in the mirror was another you. You'd..." He frowned.

The boy in the earring glanced up and cleared his throat. "You'd never feel alone."

For Shinjiro, at the brink of life and death, he saw the two Arisatos, the two who were one, as though they both existed.

Sometimes, their actions would line up precisely. As if they shared the same body. Sometimes, they were so different that he wouldn't have thought them connected. When Minato would sneak into the karaoke club and belt it out for an uncaring crowd, Hamuko was bussing tables in Chagall cafe and counting tips religiously, knowing that each yen went to something that might save someone's life. Minato would stand for an hour at the crane game at the arcade, dropping the claw over and over again to get the item that one friend had admired two weeks earlier. Hamuko would slave over a stove at the school, baking special cookies or pastries for each member of her team.

When Minato would go up to the roof, watch the stars, and try to remember his past... Hamuko would be downstairs, needling Shinji, throwing her future away on a man who couldn't share it with her.

One night, Minato looked up from his desk. He'd gotten distracted in his studies, and had scribbled "Sister?" in his notebook. Hamuko, though, kept reading, scratching out math formulas, and left Shinji to wonder what to make of that.

He sat at the table. The man with dark hair was wearing a white mask.

"Welcome. We have been waiting for you for a long time, Shinjiro Aragaki."

Shinji ignored him, ignored both of the men, and looked at the girl. "Who are you?"

She shook her head. "My name is Tamaki Uchida. I don't know why I'm here."

The blond-haired man chuckled.

Shinji did not remember appearing before Minato, during his time as the Great Seal. Does that mean that it did not happen? Perhaps it doesn't matter.

Shinji did, however, remember a time when he passed by Minato speaking with the sick Akinari, on the bench by the shrine. He clucked his tongue and kept walking. The boy cared too much about anyone, he thought to himself. If it didn't get him killed, it would destroy him. Shinjiro had cared, and it had ruined him.

A shame, perhaps, that he hadn't lingered. Akinari's impending death might have given Shinjiro pause. They were, in some ways, very alike.

Young Akihiko Sanada was shoving things into a blender when Mitsuru found him in the dorm's small kitchen. It was no doubt some sort of shake to go along with his training. Its color looked unnatural. Akihiko took some pride in how awful the things tasted—his ways of punishing himself were a little more subtle than his friend's, but they were both immature.

"Why," she asked him, "did you not tell me about him? I would have thought that you would want him here, if it's possible that he could fight."

Akihiko looked down, and stabbed a button on the blender. As it chugged, he sighed.

She waited him out. Mitsuru was nothing if not patient, deliberate. When the blender finally whirred to a stop, she continued. "You can't protect him. Not like that. Whatever he wants to do, he'll do it. We bore witness to that when he forced his way onto this team."

"I know." Akihiko poured the slurry into a tall glass. He gave her an ironic smile. "But if he's going to shoot himself in the head, I'd rather not be the one to put the gun into his hand."

The man in the mask folded his hands. "You are at the intersection between life and death."

Shinjiro sneered. "When haven't I been?"

The blond-haired man laughed, slapped the table. "You. You I like, kid."

Tamaki was looking nervously from one of the men to the other.

The man in the mask looked down. Despite not seeing his face, Shinji could sense that it was pained. "This moment is the culmination of your world's history. You two humans, who have never met each other, have had your fates inextricably linked."

In any other place, any other time, Shinji would scoff, or get angry, or offer a retort. But all things in this place were true. Shinjiro was still plugged into machines in an Iwatodai hospital. There was a scar over his heart, the shape of a starburst—left behind by an exploding watch. Somehow, Shinjiro knew the names of the two men at the table. His debts were coming due.

When, exactly, did the butterfly first flap its wings?

Such things are hard to place. Perhaps the most likely origin of the world's new turning was in ancient Japan, when four men were called from across the great nation to serve at the feet of the Yatagarasu. It is believed that the deity had chosen these men from the whisperings of a buttefly. When they received their power, they henceforth had the ability to see, and to summon, the demons that walked amongst them.

The Four Kuzunohas had a strict code of honor that had served them well in their attempts to broker peace with the demons when possible, and war against them when necessary, to protect all of Japan. Unfortunately, one of the Kuzunohas, Raidou, broke this code. He was a Housoushi magician from Kyoto, and in his moral and mortal weakness he betrayed one of his fellow Kuzunohas in the quest for power.

By the time the carnage had settled and the world had moved on, more people knew of the existence of demons, and the Four Families of the Kuzunohas were forever separated. The Yatagarasu cursed Raidou with the title Gouto-Douji, and he would forever after be forced to train those who followed in his lineage, only to watch them grow old and die. He would be immortal, but forever hold the shape of a common housecat.

The existence, and later frequent quelling, of these demons changed the world from what it might have been. The Taisho period of Japan lasted longer than it should have, and in the years following World War II, Japan was quicker to recover, and accepted more readily certain western influences while maintaining more fully its own national pride and identity. Fewer people died—because in the Taisho period, the greatest of the Kuzunohas, Raidou Kuzunoha the XIV, was able to slay the great Fiends that roamed this earth.

In the world that should have been, the demons grew stronger. The world eventually burned beneath their heels, until a brilliant man named STEVEN discovered the Demon Summoning Program, a piece of software that allowed a few spare young heroes to reclaim the earth, ever so briefly. The program had been created by Akemi Nakajima, a frustrated high school student who had damned the world with his own foolishness.

It would, too, have been a world that later collapsed into nothing in the Conception, a world that gave birth to the horrifying Hito-Shura, the most powerful mortal being in creation. Mankind would survive only barely, until the saviors known as the Embryon would raise them up into a new age.

This did not happen. The knowledge of the demons amongst us came early. And so a boy named Hazama performed a ritual in his high school gym, and changed the flow of history forever.

Just once, for a single fleeting moment, the two Arisato children, separated by the flow of time, glimpsed each other in a mirror. It was just a flash in the periphery of their vision, a color of hair that did not match their own. It was quickly forgotten.

It occurred, coincidentally enough, on the afternoon before Shinjiro Aragaki died... or did not die.

What separated these worlds? What made time flow in another way? What branched off to make Hamuko Arisato's world, a world that Minato Arisato was made to experience from upon the Great Seal?

There was a woman named Yui, who had been a female detective in a man's world. It had been a constant struggle to prove herself. She was blessed in finding a man that respected her and became her equal, a fellow investigator who became her partner. When the time came to think about having children, it was Yui who decided most insistently that they must have a girl. She wanted to teach her daughter to be stronger even than she had been.

In one universe, Yui Shirogane got her wish with her first child. In another, she had to wait for the second.

Akemi Nakajima and Ideo Hazama had quite a bit in common—they were both brilliant students who were horribly abused by their classmates. In Nakajima's case, his creation of the Demon Summoning Program was the culmination of years of work and study—a fundamental connection was forged between magic and the hard sciences. Hazama, however, did not have nearly so much originality or intelligence. He lit candles, chanted from books, and made hand gestures. In the end, though, the results in both cases were similar.

Hazama's spell pulled Karukozaka High School out of its own universe and into Makai—the realm of demons. Only one girl stood against Hazama, who had declared himself the new Demon Emperor. Her name was Tamaki Uchida, and she was the destined final member of the fourth Kuzunoha bloodline.

Maya Amano sat cross-legged on top of Tamaki's desk. The Kuzunoha Detective Agency was enabling her to spread rumors, rumors that were coming true.

Tamaki all but lived out of her office. Maya was looking at a collection of books and DVD's that were piled up on a table next to a small television.

"The Thing... Neon Genesis Evangelion... Twin Peaks..." Maya chuckled. "You have some dark tastes, Tamaki." She held up an old, battered videocasette. "Wow, a tape. You never even see these anymore." She looked at the title. "If?"

Tamaki shook her head. "Don't ask." She was typing something at her computer.

Maya frowned. "You knew all of them before, didn't you? Kei Nanjou and all of those others. Did you fight with them?"

"It wasn't my turn." She had pressed her rapier into the hands of the boy with the earring, and wished him luck. She had trusted him, understood that it was his place to save them. And when the school had frosted over at the whim of the Snow Queen, she had hid away in a small room with Satomi Tadashi, the classmate who was now her fiancée, and they'd held each other until it had all passed. That was all she wanted from life, now. Leave it to the others to solve. Let her be a normal girl, please, the kind who cried and hid.

And yet, there she was, happily working away as a Kuzunoha. She knew she'd never get that choice. Satomi was missing, and there was a Nekomata hiding away in her bathroom. Maybe, maybe this time when it was over.

Shinjiro and Tamaki chose to look at each other, rather than regard the two other figures at the table. There were cards strewn about, but whatever game they had been playing, it wasn't one that Shinji knew—they were not traditional playing cards, or hanafuda cards. They were western Tarot cards.

The blonde man finally spoke.

"Phil here..." He waved to the man in the mask. "Phil and I made a bargain, a long time ago." And it wasn't hard to guess that "a long time ago" for these two was very long indeed. "He was allowed to make one change, and I was allowed to make one change. A big change, a change that could not be explained away by a dream, or a vision. A god-level change, to coin a phrase." He chuckled. "So, he whispered in a God's ear. Oh, he did some things later, to be sure, but those were part of a separate bet. They didn't relate to our own deal." He glanced at the glowering figure across from him. "And he won't soon repeat that mistake, will you, Phil? Rebuked quite harshly by a mortal, quite harshly indeed." He grinned. "Now, he's been waiting for centuries to see when I was going to take my turn, and cash in on the other half of the deal."

Shinjiro didn't like where this was going.

Tamaki looked down. "This is my fault. If I had let Hazama win... maybe things might have evened out."

The blond-haired man laid his hand over hers. "No, I daresay not. Raidou the XIVth took care of that." He winked at Shinjiro. "Though, he might have had help."

"So." He clapped his hands together. "I've called the four of us here to complete the bargain. I get to take one of you. Which one shall it be?"

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Shinjiro Aragaki.

He was an angry boy, and one day that anger caused him to hurt another person. Shinjiro was a soft, kind, scared young man at his core, and this hurt him deeply. And so this boy, he began to wish for death. He tried to keep himself bottled away with drugs, but these things did not make him better, and did not quiet the monster in his heart.

One day, his wish was given form, when the son of the woman he had wronged re-entered his life, with a burning black vengeance buried within his core. Shinjiro came to live with this son, knowing that death would soon follow. He and the son, and the others with them, fought together and found a respect that Shinjiro had barely known before.

He did not know that death itself also lived beneath the same roof. He was so focused on the son, he did not notice that it was death who issued the orders to them in battle.

Once upon a time, there was another Shinjiro Aragaki—the man who fell in love with death. And in doing so, finally wanted to live.

"He's flatlining!" Doctors and nurses crowded around the comatose Shinjiro, one of them rubbing together the ubiquitous paddles. "What the Hell happened here?"

A nurse was pushed aside, even as she spoke. "Nothing! He just started shaking himself apart!"

It was the night that SEES would storm the final floors of Tartarus.

The paddles were placed against Shinji's bare chest. "All right," said the doctor. "let's do this. Clear!"

And in the next moment, the Dark Hour struck.

Tamaki bowed her head. "I'll go."

But Shinjiro looked at the blond-haired man with suspicion. "No. To Hell with that. Take me." The girl looked panicked, the blond-haired man serene. "Leave her out of this."

In finally wanting to live, Shinjiro finally had something worth dying for. I'm sorry, Hamuko. But you'd hate me if I didn't, anyway.

The blond-haired man clapped his hands together. "Well. If we're all decided, then..." He leaned over and whispered in Shinji's ear. "I knew you'd say yes, if I brought the girl."

Takaya leveled his revolver at Ken. Shinji dove in front of the boy, and the world went crimson, and then washed out as he fell.

Minato Arisato had not known that Shinjiro was missing his pocketwatch. He had never gone to find it, and had never returned it to him. The bullet drilled through Shinji, the teenager coughed up blood, and then he fell.

Shinji's eyes opened. Somewhere, he knew, Hamuko was dying.

He yanked the tubes forcibly from his arms as he struggled to stand. A nurse tried to restrain him, but he had become, over the years, a soldier—she hadn't a chance.

His peacoat was hanging on a hook by the door. He pulled it around himself and his hospital clothes as he stumbled out the door. He didn't notice his bare feet on the cold tile, or on the hot asphalt outside. He just ran. He plowed through hedges and cars swerved out of the way as he bolted across busy streets.

Some part of him remembered the blond-haired man, and his hand on Shinji's shoulder. But he was still there. And the man had said that he, Shinjiro would be taken. So why, now, was Hamuko... But he remembered, too, her single finger pointed to the sky.

He'd been in a bed for months. His legs shouldn't be that strong. He should have atrophy, or at least be too weak to run. But nothing was going to stop him.

Her headphones were dangling around his neck.

It was graduation day. Gekkoukan High School was crowded not only with the student body and the teachers, but parents and well-wishers. The cars were all but stacked on top of each other, and many people recognized him. Some tried to stop him, to say hello, do anything. Shinji elbowed a portly kid named Nozomi in the face to get him out of the way. By the time anyone with authority had noticed him, dressed in a coat and little else, he was already storming up the stairs.

His lungs burned, his heart was weak, and he fell once, cracking his shin hard on a step. His fingers scraped against the railing and pulled him back up.

In the moments before he reached the door for roof access, he still had thoughts for what the dreams had meant. Who the other girl was, or how when he woke he knew that she was here, that she would be here and slipping through his fingers. Minato's face had already fled his memory, but he wondered if there was some other him, some other Shinjiro somewhere, that would endure what he had avoided.

And then he was shouldering the door open, and she was in the android's lap. Her eyes were starting to close, but he had made it, had gotten just enough time to fall to his knees before her, to grab her hands and say whatever he could say as she faded away forever.

The others were coming up the stairs behind him. Akihiko was so surprised to see him that he nearly tripped over him, coming to a stop. They had only just remembered her. They were still realizing that her sleep was one that wouldn't end.

Where he'd pulled the tubes from his arms, there were trails of blood. He looked like he'd tried to kill himself. Which he had, again and again. And now, in her peaceful and eternal face, he was finding punishment for that sin.

The blond-haired man merely smiled at Philemon, rubbed two fingers together in that tiny violin gesture, and tilted his head slightly, as if he could hear the screams of Shinjiro Aragaki, Minato's Shinjiro Aragaki, as he kept falling and falling. A life ended in noble sacrifice, now sent down and down and down and down...

What would true Hell be like for someone like him? Perhaps a burning orphanage, being held down as a young girl was roasted alive again and again for eternity? Or perhaps just the knowledge that there was another him, one who had been given the perfect chance for happiness, and then knowing that this other him had lost it so completely?

"Check," said the blond-haired man, and he faded away. Philemon looked to the stricken Tamaki Uchida. Her soul had been saved—she would reside in Heaven forevermore with her late husband. But then, that was little better. Everyone but the blond-haired man that had sat down to cards (and, it was now abundantly obvious, chess) had lost, and lost in a way that they could not have fathomed.

Philemon could see enough of the future to see what had been wrought. The world had been saved at the cost of a man's soul, and two lives. And many more to come.

The question now, was what actions could he still take, without breaking his vow?

"Who was that," asked Tamaki, clutching at her arms, already starting to fade away.

Philemon shook his head. "A cypher. As he has always been."

Tamaki's last expressions were telling—a look of concern, and then joy, and then abject terror.

Philemon fluttered away, as well. There was much to do, and little human time in which to do it.

They were taking a vote around the table in the dorm lounge, as they had once before. This time, though, her presence was taken up by Shinjiro, who'd settled into her place at the table without a glance at the others. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes. Shinjiro had listened to all of this quietly, and when the awkward silence began again to build up, he leaned forward, and told them that he was going back for her.

How could he not? He had damned himself for her sake. And of the many times that he'd damned himself, he found that this was the only one that mattered.

The Key burned in his palm. The chance to go back and change things. A second chance for her, and for his soul. Maybe this time, he could be what she deserved.

"Man, Shinjiro-senpai. It's like you're holding up that wall, the way you lean against it all of the time." Junpei grinned at the upperclassman, and received a glower in return.

"Leave him alone, Stupei." Yukari opened one of the boxes of delivery Chinese food and eyed the contents. "Who ordered this?"

Koromaru barked. "Koro-chan says that Shinjiro-senpai asked for that beef on his behalf." Aigis took the carton and headed for the kitchen to find a bowl to scoop it into. The dog followed behind her, wagging his tail.

"You and Koro-chan really get along, huh?" Ken was eying him with suspicion. Shinji just shrugged.

"He's the only one who'd put up with him." Akihiko gave a little smile to his old friend, spearing a piece of pork with a chopstick just before Junpei could get to it.

Minato, who had been munching on Teriyaki chicken very quietly through all of this, glanced up through his hair. "Wouldn't that be putting yourself on the dog's level, senpai?" Junpei tried to cover a laugh by coughing loudly into his fist. Aki frowned at him.

Shinjiro walked slowly up behind Minato, and then grabbed the box of chicken from him. He sniffed at it. "This is all MSG." He dropped it in Minato's lap. "At least the dog's smarter than most of you."

"Most?" Yukari muttered.

Shinji shook his head. "He's the only one who gets it." When he'd fought off the Shadow at the shrine, and taken that wicked slash across his belly, Koromaru had been willing to die. Had accepted it bravely. He had known loss, and did not despair for living on borrowed time. Shinjiro wasn't sure if he was like the dog, or wished to be.

Mitsuru, who was working on the computer behind the front desk, didn't look up. "Judging from the state of that coat, I'd imagine what you both 'have' is fleas, Shinji."

Junpei couldn't hold it in anymore. Mitsuru being the one to burn him caused a laughing fit that slid him right off the couch onto the floor.

Fuuka, though, looked at Shinji strangely. She had been doing that a lot more, lately. "Koro-chan always seems so happy. He's willing to fight, but I think he's glad to get a second chance at life." What, was she a mind-reader, now? He glared at the frail girl, but Minato cleared his throat, still wiping bits of chicken off of his school uniform pants.

"We could ask him, you know. Through Aigis."

Yukari rolled her eyes. "You're always going to her for everything, these days." Minato looked at her, confused, and she huffed.

Aigis was returning with the bowl, Koromaru jogging circles around her. Fuuka turned to them. "Koro-chan, what's the meaning of life?"

Koro barked. Aigis just stared, in that non-blinking way that she had. "He says that it is good food."

Fuuka, who had caught Shinji in the lounge with a cooking magazine, just chuckled. "Well, we can all agree on that."

Minato looked at Shinji, perhaps only to avoid Yukari's death-glare. "Well? What's your answer to the same question?"

Shinjiro, who didn't have an answer, just turned away. "To get by without getting asked dumb questions."

"Funny." Aki sat back. "I thought all humans were good for was asking dumb questions. That's how we tend to solve things."

"I guess that makes Stupei a philosopher." Yukari threw a balled up napkin at Junpei, who caught it in midair.

"Stop calling me that!"

Shinjiro Aragaki left the lounge, and headed up the many flights of stairs to the roof, where his ashtray sat. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky.

The door creaked behind him, and he turned. It was Ikutski, who adjusted his glasses. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was up here..." Shinji glared at him. He didn't know how much of what Strega said was real and how much was bunk, but he didn't trust the man an inch. "Yes, well... I see that you got high so that you could smoke... Oh! That's a good one!" He made that dopey grin of his. "I'll have to remember that..."

"Uh-huh." Shinjiro flicked ash. "So, Chairman... since you're so full of good ideas tonight... what's the meaning of life?"

The way Ikutski's face tensed, for just a moment, was worth noting. "I'm not sure that life has a purpose, I'm afraid." He shrugged. "I suppose that doesn't sound right, does it?" Shinjiro crossed his arms. "Well... I think we all have to do good... Ah!" He smiled. "We have to give meaning to death. I suppose that's how I'd put it. Some try to do so by doing the most good, some try by dying with things, or power... yes, I think it's giving meaning to death." He seemed satisfied with himself. "Thank you, Shinjiro. I'm going to think about that one."

When he'd left, Shinji sat on the edge of the roof and considered how frustrating it was that the Chairman had said what made the most sense to him. That was almost enough to swerve him from the path that he was on.

But, he mused, to find meaning in death was to put death above living, and that was already what he'd done. As his cigarette burned down and the night grew darker, Shinji wondered if there could be another way to give meaning to death. If he had the right to dare suggest that his death could do more than put a single boy's mind to rest.

Rather than stub the butt out into the ashtray, he flicked it off into the night. In the end, he figured, it probably wouldn't matter.