The physician's hands moved with practiced efficiency, but his expression betrayed something close to grudging respect. "You should be dead," he said for perhaps the twentieth time in three days. "Medically speaking, you are dead. Only stubbornness animates your corpse."
Sekitanki lay on the futon, every breath a negotiation with broken ribs, and managed a weak smile. "Stubbornness has gotten me this far." "That is not a sustainable medical strategy."
"Neither was fighting prehistoric scorpions with sharpened bones, but here we are."
The physician paused in his work, genuine curiosity flickering across his weathered features. "You truly fought creatures from before time? From the age when gods still walked earth in physical form?"
"I fought things that had never seen a human and didn't care about divinity. Just hunger and territory and survival. Turns out gods are less relevant when everything wants to eat you."
"Blasphemy. But interesting blasphemy." The old gramps tied off the final bandage. "The abbot wishes to see you. You have earned your audience with the Toki no Kagami. Try not to defile it immediately with your foreign presence."
The main hall of the Jikai Shrine was built to inspire awe, and it succeeded.
Wooden columns rose like ancient trees, supporting a ceiling painted with celestial imagery. Incense smoke curled through shafts of afternoon light, creating an atmosphere somewhere between temple and dream. Warrior-monks lined the walls—silent, watchful, hands resting on weapons that were both practical tools and sacred instruments.
And at the hall's center, elevated on a platform of polished stone, surrounded by offerings and prayer scrolls: His time machine.
Sekitanki's breath caught. Even damaged, even partially buried in dirt, even worshipped as divine artifact—it was his. The machine he'd built in a Tokyo laboratory that felt like another lifetime. The machine that had been destroyed in the Carboniferous, rebuilt from impossible materials, and malfunctioned catastrophically to throw him here.
His only way home. Or his only way to continue being lost. The machine was unstable now, temporal coordinates corrupted. It could send him anywhere, anywhen.
But at least it was possibility.
Abbot Kenshin stood beside the platform, his expression serene. "So. The demon smith wishes to examine our most sacred treasure. Tell me: do you still claim to have created this divine gift?"
"It's not divine. It's just physics and engineering and desperation compressed into metal and circuitry." "Those sound like ingredients for divinity to me." Kenshin's eyes sparkled with something between wisdom and mischief. "But approach. Examine. Confirm or deny your claims. The truth will reveal itself regardless of what we believe."
Sekitanki limped forward, each step sending fresh pain through his tournament-damaged body. The monks tensed, hands tightening on weapons. They'd accepted that he'd earned this right, but that didn't mean they trusted him.
He climbed the platform steps slowly, reverently—not from religious feeling, but from genuine emotion. This machine represented everything: his escape from depression, his journey through prehistory, his transformation from empty genius to something new.
Up close, the damage was extensive. The temporal core's housing was cracked. The quantum oscillator was missing critical components. The tachyon emitter array—the part he'd rebuilt using wasp stingers and organic compounds—had been damaged in the transition between eras.
But it was repairable. Maybe. Possibly.
If I had tools. And materials. And time. And wasn't dying from accumulated injuries. His hand touched the metal surface, and something unexpected happened: the machine hummed. A low vibration, almost subsonic. The kind of sound quantum particles make when they recognize their creator's touch. Around him, the monks gasped, stepping back. The offerings trembled. Incense smoke swirled in patterns that suggested currents no one could see.
"It responds to you," Kenshin said quietly. "It knows you."
"It's not sentient. It's just..." Sekitanki paused, searching for words that would bridge science and spirituality. "It's resonating with my bioelectric field. Recognition at quantum level. We spent weeks connected during construction."
"You say 'not sentient' as if that distinction matters. A blade knows its smith. A person knows their parents. Why should a vessel built to traverse time not know the one who gave it purpose?"
Sekitanki had no answer for that. His scientific worldview said machines were objects, tools, nothing more. But he'd also rebuilt this device with his own blood and desperation mixed into every component. Maybe there was something to Kenshin's philosophy after all.
"Can you repair it?" the abbot asked.
"I don't know. The damage is severe. I'd need materials this era doesn't have. Precision tools that won't be invented for centuries. And even if I could repair it, the temporal navigation system is compromised. I can't guarantee where—or when—it would send me." "But you will try." It wasn't a question. Kenshin understood—perhaps better than Sekitanki himself—that trying was inevitable. That giving up wasn't in his nature anymore.
"Yes. I'll try."
"Then you may work here. Under supervision, of course. The shrine will provide what materials we can. In exchange..." Kenshin's expression grew serious. "In exchange, you will teach us. Share your knowledge. Not of time travel—that is too dangerous—but of other things. Medicine. Engineering. Philosophy from your future that might illuminate our present."
"You want me to potentially change history."
"History changes with every decision every person makes. You simply make larger decisions than most. Better you do so consciously, with wisdom, than accidentally through ignorance."
Sekitanki considered this. Everything he'd done since arriving had already changed history: revolutionary metallurgy introduced centuries early, combat techniques that blended eras, his very presence creating ripples in causality.
Maybe trying to minimize impact is futile. Maybe I should focus on making the impact meaningful. "Agreed. I'll teach you what I can. But I need something else in exchange." "Oh?"
"Tadayoshi. The person from the final tournament. He needs sanctuary. Actual sanctuary, not just temporary refuge. Help him rebuild." Kenshin's eyebrows rose. "You would bargain for your enemy's welfare?"
"He's not my enemy. He's someone who got broken by circumstances we both contributed to. He deserves a second chance." "Most would simply be grateful to have survived such a enemys rage."
"I've spent too long surviving. I want to actually live. And living means helping people, not just outlasting them." The abbot studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Very well. Tadayoshi will be given sanctuary and purpose. We have use for broken things here—they make the best warriors once properly reforged." The work began the next day, despite the physician's protests.
Sekitanki established a workshop in a corner of the main hall, close enough to the time machine to work directly with it but far enough from the shrine's heart to minimize accusations of defilement. Warrior-monks watched constantly, rotating shifts, ensuring he didn't attempt anything sacrilegious.
Or dangerous. The line between the two was unclear.
Yuki became his primary guard and assistant. She'd recovered from their duel faster than him—her wound had been clean, his had been compounded by three previous rounds of damage. Now she sat nearby, watching him work with the same intensity she brought to swordsmanship.
"What does this component do?" she asked, pointing to the quantum oscillator. "It generates controlled fluctuations in spacetime. Creates the resonance pattern needed to establish temporal displacement." "I understood perhaps three words of that explanation."
"It makes the machine able to travel through time instead of just existing in time." "Better. Still incomprehensible, but better." They worked in companionable silence—Sekitanki disassembling components, cataloguing damage, sketching redesigns on paper Enjō had provided. Yuki sharpened weapons, meditated, occasionally asked questions that suggested she understood more than she admitted.
"Why do you wish to return?" she asked during the third day. "You have skills here. Purpose. People who value you. In your future, you said you were empty. Why return to emptiness?"
Sekitanki set down the component he'd been examining. "Because I wasn't empty. I was depressed and isolated and convinced I was empty. There's a difference. And because my family is there. My mother, who I never appreciated. My father, who I ignored. They deserve to know I survived. That I learned. That I'm sorry."
"And if you cannot return? If the machine fails?" "Then I build a life here. With you, Takeda, Kanemoto, Enjō. With Tadayoshi if he'll forgive me. It won't be the life I planned, but..." He smiled slightly. "I've learned that unplanned lives can have more meaning than perfectly calculated ones." "Wisdom. Hard-won, but wisdom nonetheless." On the fifth day, Takeda visited with news from the outside world. "The Ashikaga clan mobilizes," he said grimly. "Word has spread of the foreign demon who creates impossible swords and defeated their finest warrior. They see you as threat to their power. And they're not alone—three other clans have also expressed... interest."
"Interest meaning they want to kill me or capture me?" "Both, depending on clan. Some see you as weapon to be claimed. Others see you as corruption to be eliminated. Either way, they're coming." Kenshin, who'd been present for this conversation, nodded calmly. "We anticipated this. The shrine has stood for two hundred years by being too difficult to assault and too useful to destroy. We will endure."
"With respect, Abbot, you've never harbored something as valuable as him." Takeda gestured at Sekitanki. "He's not just refugee. He's walking revolution. Every clan that claims him gains century's advantage in warfare, engineering, medicine."
"Then they cannot be allowed to claim him." "Against three major clans? The shrine's warriors are skilled, but—" "But they have never fought beside someone who learned combat from the dawn of time itself." Kenshin's smile was serene but his eyes were sharp. "Sekitanki-san, how long until your machine might function?"
"Weeks. Maybe about two months. I'm working with materials never meant for this purpose. It's like performing brain surgery with kitchen knives—possible, but not efficient or safe."
"Then we have time. Time to prepare. Time to teach." The abbot's gaze swept the hall, taking in the assembled monks. "And time for all of us to learn what this demon can teach us about survival."
The teaching began that evening.
Sekitanki stood in the training yard, surrounded by warrior-monks who looked at him with expressions ranging from curiosity to skepticism to barely-concealed hostility. Teaching had never been his strength—explaining things to people who didn't immediately understand frustrated him.
But he'd learned patience in the Carboniferous. And if he was going to survive whatever was coming, he needed these warriors functional according to his definition of functional.
"Everything you've been taught about combat is wrong," he began bluntly. Immediate muttering. Hands on weapons. One monk started to stand, outrage clear on his face.
"Not because your teachers were incompetent," Sekitanki continued. "But because your training optimizes for the wrong things. You train for honor, discipline, spiritual growth. Those are beautiful goals. They're also suicidal when facing someone who only cares about winning."
"And you know winning?" The speaker was a young monk, maybe twenty, his tone just shy of insulting.
"I know surviving. There's a difference, but survival is kind of your own unique way of winning." He gestured for Yuki to join him. She rose, her own sword drawn. "Himura-san, attack me. Any technique. Any speed. Try to wound me."
She didn't hesitate. Her blade came in a perfect strike—textbook form, optimal angle, exactly what any master would teach.
Sekitanki dropped flat, rolled between her legs, and swept his hand at her ankles. She jumped—exactly as expected—and his follow-up motion would have driven a blade into her back if he'd been holding one.
The watching monks gasped. "That was dishonorable," the young monk protested. "Rolling in dirt, attacking from below—" "Was effective," Sekitanki interrupted. "Honor doesn't matter when you're dead. Himura-san is legendary because her technique is perfect. But perfect technique has predictable patterns. And patterns can be exploited."
He stood, dusting himself off. "The creatures I fought in the Carboniferous had no honor. No technique. Just hunger and territory and evolutionary optimization. They taught me that survival requires three things: reading your opponent faster than they read you, accepting damage to inflict greater damage, and doing things no sane person would attempt." Over the next hour, he demonstrated.
Showed them how to read body language to predict strikes before they developed. How to use environment—trees, rocks, uneven ground—as weapons. How to accept small wounds to create major openings. How to fight multiple opponents by controlling space rather than trying to defeat each individually.
The monks were skeptical at first. Then intrigued. Then genuinely engaged. "This is not the way of warriors," one said. "No," Sekitanki agreed. "It's the way of survivors. And when armies come for this shrine, you'll need to choose: be warriors who die honorably, or survivors who live to protect what matters."
Yuki watched from the side, her expression thoughtful. "You have changed much from the terrified demon who fought me." "I'm still terrified. I just got better at functioning through it."
"That may be the most honest thing any warrior has ever told me." That night, alone in his quarters, Sekitanki worked by candlelight. His hands moved over component designs, calculating tolerances, sketching modifications. The time machine was his puzzle, his purpose, his potential escape.
But increasingly, he wondered if he actually wanted to escape.
His old life had been empty. Achievement without connection. Recognition without meaning. Here, damaged and struggling, he'd found something: people who cared if he survived. Purpose beyond himself. The understanding that genius only mattered when shared.
Would returning to Tokyo restore that emptiness? Would I slip back into isolation once the novelty of survival wore off?
His mother's voice, memory surfacing: "Hankō, you're not weird. You're just different. Special." He'd hated that word. Special. It had isolated him, made him other, separated him from normal human connection. But here, being special was survival advantage. Being different was valued. Being other was exactly what they needed.
Maybe I needed to travel 359 million years and 700 years to find where I belonged. A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts. Tadayoshi entered, hesitant, no longer the broken person from the tournament but not yet rebuilt into anything new. "May I speak with you?"
"Of course."
The former samurai lord knelt formally. "I wish to apologize. My rage was misdirected. You did not destroy my life—I did, by building it on foundations too fragile to withstand one defeat. You simply revealed the weakness that was always there." "No apologies needed. We're both victims of circumstances we barely controlled." "Perhaps. But I would like to make amends. The abbot says armies approach. That the shrine needs warriors. I may have lost my honor, but my blade still functions. Let me fight beside you. Let my redemption be protecting the demon who showed me that survival matters more than death with dignity."
Sekitanki extended his hand—modern gesture in medieval context. "Welcome to the family of misfit survivors."
Tadayoshi took it, grip firm, and something passed between them. Recognition. Understanding. The bond of people who'd touched rock bottom and decided to climb up anyways, without stupid purpose.
TO BE CONTINUED... [NEXT EPISODE: "Episode 12: Return or Extinction (Season Finale)"]