A/N:- Kurogane seemed to be the only sane one left... And erm, despite the misleading summary, no, this is not a fluffy fic. It's pretty darn dramatic. I might use the same summary to write a happy kuro/fay fic though... Hmm...

In That Instant

He was there, he was the one who saw it all unfold. Well, most of it anyway. He didn't actually see the boy commit the gruesome act itself. But the aftermath was more than enough to curdle the blood in his veins and send pinpricks of shivers down his usually-hardened spine.

It was the moment, when he was running and running and running to get to the underground reservoir, the still-unconscious princess cradled protectively in his arms, her head lolling from side to side like a frail rag doll made of paper, as he sped down the stone hallways. And when the girl had vanished all of a sudden, faded away indelicately like she had never once existed in the first place, Kurogane knew that something had gone very, very wrong. And he and the others ran even harder down the stairs to what Kurogane would later come to call The Hell Unbeknownst To Them.

The reservoir was the setting where the nightmare took place; like a stage with all its operational props. To the ninja, the cast was already assembled. Everyone was there, despite all three of his fellow human companions not anywhere to be seen (which meant they could only be in the water, which the pork bun effectively confirmed with dread and terror and agonizing concern in its voice and even more in its eyes). It was almost as though bloody fate—hitzusen, as the witch had called it—had been waiting for him to arrive at the scene, before the final event took place.

And so it did. Something of a mocking charade perhaps. The water swirled and swirled and swirled, and threatened to drown them all in one arching sweep as it climaxed to the highest part of the underground enclosure. And Kurogane had yelled at them all to get back. And, bless their innocent souls, they did. But the man himself took a determined step forward on his own towards the edge of the overhanging precipice anyway, because he couldn't care less about the damn water. He cared only for the rest of his surrogate family who had all somehow ended up under the damn reservoir. When he started to care about them in the first place, he didn't know. What he did know was that he, at that point in time, was afraid. So very afraid. But so very, very helpless at the same time.

And that helplessness only intensified a thousandfold when the water churned and abruptly evaporated before his disbelieving eyes, bestowing the ultimately incredible and twisted scene before him in all its gory, horrific detail. The splashes of dark, angry red everywhere, the two bodies so very familiar even from such a distance, those cold, cold eyes… It was something that was branded in his mind forever, never to be forgotten until the day he died.

The boy, the kid, should not have been standing over the very person who had acted in every sense of the word, like his mother, looking like a heartless, soulless, murderous monster (and later, Kurogane would come to realize how close he had been to discerning how Syaoran looked at that moment). And no, no, no, there should not have been blood splattered all over that outlandish platform. And it should not, not, not have been the blood of the mage.

But it was, it was, it WAS.

Kurogane had vividly remembered that it was painfully quiet for some uncanny reason after the water had vaporized into gaseous bubbles of nothingness, as though the world had suddenly stopped spinning on its axis. Painfully quiet, apart from the lone, sickening crunching sounds coming from the bloodied mouth of the kid as though he were chewing sand. It only took the ninja a split second after the boy had swallowed before realizing with repulsed nausea what had taken place.

Because the boy no longer had a matching set of eyes.

And all Kurogane felt following that point was red, hot anger. And he, in his livid rage, didn't remember much afterward, except that he might have broken the boy's arm by hurling him against the stone wall. But only because the boy, if he could call that heartless thing a boy, had made to devour Fay's other eye. And no way in hell would the ninja have consented to that. Not over his dead body. Not ever.

And then there was yelling. Yelling, yelling, yelling. Kurogane didn't register that he was the one yelling. Yelling and yelling and yelling something about the mage to the boy, hoping that some miracle would make him listen and understand. But when that flash of green-pink-red-blue-black light erupted from nowhere and everywhere at he same time, and an identical kid materialized from the blaze of magic, everything froze once more.

And in that instant, with Fay's limp form roughly cradled in his weakening arms, and the two identical Syaoran's standing before him (none of them he actually knew), and the manjuu crying, and the princess nowhere to be found,Kurogane wondered how it had all gone to hell so quickly.

-end

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-A/N-: 'Acid Tokyo' was horrifying. And I can safely say right here, right now, that I did not enjoy writing this piece…

Well anyway, reviews are always greatly appreciated anyways.