Takeshi sat alone at a scarred wooden table outside, close to the Rust Room.
The pistol from Marcus was all edges and patience, a compact predator resting in his palm. A faint electric hum lived inside the thing, like an annoying mosquito.
He thumbed the magazine release, checked the feed, pressed the mag back in until it clicked. For the fifth time.
For some reason known only to him, he held the gun tightly, like he was fearing that it would disappear from his hands.
He breathed through his nose. In. Out. In. The air smelled like citrus and metal. It pulled him back to nights that did not exist anymore.
A kitchen lantern. Two small bowls on a wooden floor. Laughter. His daughter stealing pickled plums and swearing it was the cat. His wife's hands, stained with tea, and a huge smile across her face.
The lantern had gone out that same night and never come back.
Footsteps approached, not hiding themselves.
No shuffle, no swagger. Just forward. Takeshi did not look up.
Raizen stopped a respectful distance away. The boy had grown broader across the shoulders from the weeks in the Underworks. The Rust Room did that.
It fed you more than your own limits and asked if you wanted seconds. Raizen had said yes more often than he should have. His dirty blond hair grew over time, now tied at the back of his head.
He cleared his throat. Waited. When Takeshi did not offer an opening, he made one.
"I thought Marcus's bodyguard kept that pistol locked" Raizen said. No accusation.
"He liked to think he does... But this gun was never meant to be safe" Takeshi said.
Raizen shifted his weight. "You planning to take a trip I should know about?"
Takeshi set the rag down, turned the pistol sideways, and checked the sight again.
"Planning to clean a tool that needs it."
"Tools are for jobs" Raizen said.
"Sharp eyes, huh... As usual." Takeshi answered. He glanced past the boy into the hallway, at something only he knew.
The sounds from outside stitched a steady line through the silence.
"People are whispering" Raizen finally opened his mouth. "About the Moirai."
"People whisper when they are bored or afraid. Sometimes both."
"You believe they exist."
Takeshi rotated the pistol, pressed the slide, listened to the sound it made.
"I believe in results. I believe in acts. I saw all of them."
Takeshi's left hand paused. The rag held still. He did not lift his eyes.
The lantern went out, he thought... Not because the wind took it. Because someone wanted the dark.
He set the pistol down carefully. When he spoke, the words came out calm. The dangerous kind of calm.
"I think men with masks came through a door that should not have opened" he said. "I think they walked past the guard dog without waking him. I think they moved like a ghost and left like a secret. They came to show they could. They came to silence the voice that wanted freedom"
Raizen's jaw tightened. He had that way of getting angry that made him quiet.
"You fought." He said, more like a question.
"I bled" Takeshi answered. His thumb hovered above the place where the metal of his arm met skin. "I bled a lot. They took my eye and my left."
"The eyepatch and arm..." Raizen said softly.
"A reminder does not heal you. It simply teaches you not to forget."
Raizen stepped closer to the edge of the table.
His eyes flicked to the gun and back. "If they are what the whispers say, if they are untouchable, you cannot go alone."
Takeshi's mouth curved, a line that did not reach his eyes. "You should tell the sea not to be wet while you are at it."
"I am serious" Raizen said.
"So am I."
Silence fell over the place for a few moments.
But Raizen didn't give up. Instead, he tried another angle. "Granny Louissa says the Moirai are a story people use to explain what they cannot stop. Maybe they are a mask for a dozen groups. Maybe they are smoke, they don't exist."
"Maybe" Takeshi said. "Maybe I put my blade in the smoke and find the hand holding it up."
"You want me to ask you to let me come" Raizen affirmed. "You want me to force it, so you can refuse and make it simple."
Takeshi met his eyes for the first time. The boy saw more than most. That was going to be a problem for him later. Or it would save him. It was hard to tell which.
"This is my mission" Takeshi said. "My blood, my fight. The debt is written in my handwriting. I cannot ask you to sign it."
Raizen's fingers curled. He had not yet learned the comfort of a lie, and Takeshi did not want him to learn it. "Alright then. Have it your way. But I won't forgive you if you die"
Takeshi got up, and started walking towards Louissa's. He whispered, to himself. Raizen's ears did not catch it.
"I wish... I wish I could say that I don't need your forgiveness…"
They silently arrived at Louissa's small abode. Obi and Hikari were gone to the market to get whatever Granny sent them after.
"Boy" she said to Raizen, not taking her gaze from Takeshi. "Fetch the kettle. The strong leaves. And the small cups."
Raizen hesitated. She did not repeat herself. But her tone was different than usual.
When he had gone, Louisa pulled the stool closer and sat. The old wood protested and then accepted her.
"I am not your conscience, Takeshi" she said, conversational, like discussing the price of noodles. "Even if I were, you would not listen anyway."
"True" Takeshi said.
"I remember you before the patch" she went on. "A fast one. Dangerous, too. Way too proud to be careful. Good at leaving without saying goodbye. Bad at coming back the same shape you left."
Takeshi did not answer.
"I have also seen boys who took on battles that were not theirs" she went on. "Their legends got taller. They never did.
He almost smiled. "You are letting me decide I am wrong without saying it."
"I am letting you hear your own selfish reasons out loud" Louisa said. "Sometimes the echo tells you something the voice did not."
Raizen returned with a battered kettle and three cups that didn't match. The smell of the strong leaves filled the room.
Louisa poured for Takeshi first. He took the cup without drinking.
Raizen remained standing. "If you go" he said "and you do not come back, no one will even know which door to knock on. They will simply say the Moirai took another rumor. That is not a better ending than the one you are writing."
Takeshi watched the steam rise. In it, the kitchen lantern returned for a second. His daughter's finger pressed to her lips, daring him to laugh. His wife's hand pushing hair from his eyes.
The memory was vivid, as if it didn't happen a long time ago.
"I am not writing an ending" Takeshi said. "I am simply cutting out a cursed sentence that shouldn't have been there in the first place."
Louisa sipped her tea. "Be precise then" she said. "Imprecise cuts bleed longer."
He finished his cup in two swallows. The slight burn down his throat reminded him that he was still made of flesh somewhere.
Raizen put his cup down, untouched. "I will not ask anyone to come" he went on. "But I will not pretend to be asleep, like everyone else."
Takeshi stood. The chair legs screeched against the stone. He slid the pistol deeper under his coat. He looked at Raizen and found the boy's stubborn look almost funny.
He then looked at Louisa and found her patience like a wall someone had painted to look like a garden.
"I have been many things" he said. "Good at very few of them. Now, I can only be good at this one."
Louisa nodded as if he had told her the market was out of rice. "Old bones don't chase. They wait and listen. If you come back, I will still be here to hear the parts you want to say."
"And if I do not come back?" Takeshi wanted to say, but the thought was stuck in his throat. He turned toward the corridor.
Raizen followed him to the doorway. Neither did he talk.
He took two steps into the corridor. Takeshi could feel the map of the tunnels under his feet, the way a blind man feels the shape of a room simply from memory.
He would take the north run first. Across a broken grate, up a short ladder with the rungs too far apart. He had walked that path so many times in his head that he could do it blindfolded.
He paused for a moment.
It was a small thing.
But Raizen saw it. Louisa did too, though she pretended to press a wrinkle from her shawl.
Takeshi lifted his collar and walked outside, into the silence. The corridor accepted him, and the dark swallowed the edges of his coat. Raizen stood in the doorway until the sound of footsteps vanished.
Takeshi kept walking.
At the end of the corridor he paused. For the first time that night, he glanced back.
His cloak hid his mouth, but his eyes betrayed him - carrying a weight heavier than steel, older than scars.
They spoke of nights that would never return, of faces long gone. He still thought the same thing, stubbornly.
This was his fight.
And he was going to finally get his revenge.
The man who stepped into Neoshima's dark wasn't Takeshi.
It was everything the Moirai failed to kill.