The time machine hummed with power that shouldn't exist in the Kamakura Period.
Sekitanki stood before it in the pre-dawn darkness, three months of desperate work finally complete. The device looked nothing like the sleek laboratory prototype he'd built in Tokyo—this was a grotesque hybrid of eras, cobbled together from medieval materials, Carboniferous salvage, and quantum physics that belonged seven hundred years in the future.
Chitin housing reinforced with folded steel. Organic conductors wrapped in silk insulation. The quantum oscillator rebuilt using principles that wouldn't be formally discovered until Einstein. A wasp stinger as the tachyon emitter's focusing element. Prayer scrolls incorporated not for divine blessing but because their rice paper had the exact dielectric properties needed for temporal field stabilization.
It was beautiful in the way desperate innovation is always beautiful. It was also terrifyingly unstable. "You are certain it will work?" Enjō asked quietly, standing beside him in the main hall. "No. I'm certain it might work. There's a difference." Sekitanki ran his hand along the machine's surface, feeling it respond to his touch with that subsonic hum. "The temporal navigation system is still compromised. I can generate enough power to punch through spacetime, but I can't guarantee where—or when—I'll emerge. Could be Tokyo 2024. Could be ancient Rome. Could be the heat death of the universe."
"Comforting." "I've survived worse odds." "That is also not comforting."
They stood in silence as the eastern sky began to lighten. Behind them, the shrine was waking—monks beginning morning routines, the smell of cooking rice drifting from the kitchens, the eternal rhythms of a place that had stood for centuries and would stand for centuries more.
Without him. The thought hurt more than he'd expected. "I will miss this," Sekitanki said quietly. "I know that's insane. This era tried to execute me, hunt me, kill me in tournaments. But I'll miss it anyway."
"Because here you found what you lacked in your own time: purpose beyond yourself. People who see you, not your achievements." Enjō's weathered hand rested briefly on Sekitanki's shoulder. "That is not insane. That is human."
"When did you become so wise?" "I have always been wise. You simply became capable of listening."
They gathered at dawn—everyone who'd become family over these impossible months. Takeda stood with his characteristic ronin dignity, but his eyes were wet. "You taught me that honor without flexibility is just another word for suicide. That's not a lesson I'll forget. And you taught me that having principles doesn't make you rigid. That sometimes tradition exists because it works." Sekitanki clasped his arm in the warrior's grip they'd developed. "Take care of them monk. Especially Tadayoshi. He's still fragile."
"He is stronger than you think. We all are. You showed us that." Takeda announced with gesturing glee.
Kanemoto approached next, the old smith carrying a wrapped bundle. "I made you something. For your journey." He unveiled a tanto—short blade, perfectly balanced, the steel folded in patterns that resembled fractal coastlines. "It may not serve you in your era of machines and flying vehicles. But it will remind you that beauty can emerge from desperate craft. That masters are just students who never stopped learning." Sekitanki accepted it with trembling hands. "I'll treasure this. Always."
"See that you do. It contains the best of what we created together." The old gramps's voice broke. "You gave an aging smith reason to innovate again. That is gift beyond price."
Tadayoshi bowed formally—the full bow of samurai respect, not the partial bow of social courtesy. "You could have let me die. Should have, by every logic of self-preservation. Instead you saved me, gave me purpose again. I owe you a debt I can never repay."
"You don't owe me anything. Just promise you'll use your second chance well. Build something better than what was lost." "I swear it. On whatever honor I have left."
Yuki was last, and her composure finally cracked. Tears streamed down her face as she approached—the legendary warrior who never showed weakness, weeping openly in front of the entire shrine.
"I wanted to go with you," she said. "To see your future. To understand the world that shaped someone like you." "I know. And I wish I could take you. But the machine barely functions for one person. Adding another would—"
"Would kill us both. I know. You explained the physics." She wiped her eyes angrily. "I am being selfish. You deserve to return home. To tell your family what you learned. To find peace."
"I found peace here. With you. With all of you." Sekitanki's voice broke. "You were the family I needed when I didn't know I needed family. You saw the broken, empty genius and decided he was worth saving anyway." "You were never empty. Just lost. Like all of us." She embraced him suddenly, fiercely. "If you cannot return, if the machine fails, know that you changed us. Changed me. I will remember the demon who taught me that survival itself is victory."
They hugged each other while the shrine watched, and Sekitanki let himself cry—for the first time since arriving, let himself fully feel the weight of everything. The isolation of his old life. The terror of the Carboniferous. The beauty of what he'd found here. The crushing pain of leaving it behind.
"I'll find you," he whispered. "In my era, I'll research what happened to everyone. Find your graves. Leave offerings. Make sure history remembers you as you actually were, not just names in textbooks."
"And if history forgets us?" "Then I'll write it myself. Every story. Every moment. I'll make sure you're all remembered." Abbot Kenshin performed the ceremony—not Buddhist exactly, more a hybrid of spiritual blessing and temporal physics lecture that only made sense in this impossible moment.
"You came to us as demon," he intoned, speaking to the assembled shrine. "Proved yourself as warrior. Became as teacher. Leave as friend. May the river of time carry you to shore you seek. And if it does not, may you find new shores worth standing upon."
"Thank you," Sekitanki said. "For everything. For sanctuary, for patience, for accepting that some truths transcend eras." "We did not accept truths. We accepted you. There is difference." Kenshin smiled. "Go with our blessing. And if your machine malfunctions again, try not to land in another era that wants to execute you immediately." "I'll do my best." He climbed into the machine's cramped interior—barely room for one person, especially someone surrounded by improvised components that hummed with barely-contained power. Through the viewport, he could see them all standing there: Takeda, Kanemoto, Tadayoshi, Yuki, Enjō, Kenshin, dozens of monks and samurai who'd become students and friends.
This is goodbye. Actual goodbye. I might never see them again. His hand moved to the activation sequence. Paused.
"I promise," he called out, voice breaking. "If I can control where I go, I'll try to come back. To visit. To see what you all became. To tell you that your lives mattered to someone from the future."
"We know we matter," Yuki called back. "You taught us that. Now go teach your own era." Right. My own era. Tokyo. Mom's kitchen. Dad's newspaper. The life I threw away.
Time to see if I can reclaim it.
He initiated the sequence. The quantum oscillator spun up with a sound like reality screaming. The temporal field began to form—space-time warping visibly, light bending in impossible geometries.
Through the viewport, he watched them—his found family, his impossible friends—as they wavered and distorted. Yuki raised her hand in farewell. Takeda bowed. Kanemoto wiped his eyes.
Then the field collapsed inward with violence that tore consciousness into fragments.
TEMPORAL TRANSITION
The journey between eras felt different this time.
Before, temporal displacement had been chaotic—being disassembled at the quantum level, scattered across time's landscape, reassembled through pure chance.
Now, despite the machine's instability, there was something like control. Not complete—the navigation was still compromised—but enough to aim generally homeward. Enough to try. Sekitanki saw time laid out like a river: the Carboniferous's green fury, the Kamakura Period's structured beauty, eras flowing past like frames in an infinite film. He saw potential futures—branches of possibility where his choices had created different outcomes. Timelines where he'd died in the Carboniferous. Where he'd never left Tokyo. Where he'd stayed in the Kamakura Period and watched his friends grow old.
But this timeline—this branch where I'm trying to go home—this is the one I'm choosing. Please let me choose correctly. The machine shuddered. Alarms that shouldn't exist in medieval construction screamed warnings. Something was wrong—the temporal coordinates were drifting, pulled by gravitational wells in spacetime that the damaged navigation system couldn't compensate for.
No no no—
He tried to correct, to manually adjust the quantum oscillator's frequency, but the controls were responding sluggishly. The machine was overheating, components stressed beyond design limits.
Come on. Just get me close. Tokyo, 2024. That's all I need.
But time had other plans. The machine's trajectory curved, caught in a temporal eddy he couldn't escape. The coordinates shifted: 2024 became 1945. Tokyo remained Tokyo, but the era—o no. He materialized three meters above ground and fell hard, the impact driving air from his lungs. The machine crashed beside him, smoking and sparking, its housing cracked beyond repair.
One jump. He'd had one jump. And it had failed. But as his vision cleared, as he took in his surroundings, Sekitanki felt something unexpected: hope. Because everything looked modern. Buildings—actual modern buildings, not medieval structures. Streets. Power lines. The smell of gasoline and concrete and civilization. I'm home. I'm actually home. Close enough, anyway.
He stood, testing his weight. Everything ached from the landing, but nothing was broken. The demon blade Kanemoto had forged still hung at his side. The tanto the old smith had given him was secure in his belt.
First: find out exactly where I am. Second: contact the Institute. Third: tell everyone I survived. Fourth: apologize to Mom and Dad for everything. He started walking toward what looked like a main street, and that's when he noticed the details that didn't fit.
The buildings were modern, yes. But damaged. Burned. Several had collapsed entirely. The power lines were torn down. And the street—the street was covered in rubble and debris and things he didn't want to identify. What happened here? Earthquake? Bombing?
Then he heard them: voices speaking Japanese, but the dialect was wrong. Old-fashioned. Pre-modern phrasing. And the sound of—gunfire. Actual gunfire. Automatic weapons. Artillery in the distance.
No. No, this can't be—he rounded a corner and stopped dead.
Soldiers. Dozens of them. Japanese soldiers in World War II uniforms that he recognized from history textbooks. Some were wounded, being treated by field medics. Others were preparing defensive positions, their faces hollowed by exhaustion and something worse than fear.
And beyond them: more soldiers. American soldiers. The sounds of battle were getting closer. I didn't land in 2024. I landed in 1945. World War II. The final year.
I landed in the middle of a war zone. A Japanese soldier spotted him—saw his strange clothes, his obvious confusion, the blade at his side. The soldier's rifle came up instantly.
"Identify yourself! Are you a spy? Deserter? What unit?" Sekitanki raised his hands slowly. "I'm not—I'm a civilian. I'm lost. I don't—" "Civilians evacuated weeks ago! Only soldiers and dead remain here!" The soldier's finger tightened on the trigger. "Last chance: identify yourself or I shoot!"
Think. THINK. What would explain my appearance? My clothes? My—
An explosion, close enough to feel the shockwave. The soldier flinched, and Sekitanki dove behind a ruined wall. More explosions. The sound of tanks approaching. Screaming in Japanese and English.
The battle was intensifying. And he was trapped in the middle of it. I survived 359 million years of prehistoric monsters. I survived medieval samurai tournaments while dying. I survived everything the universe threw at me. And I landed in World War II. In an active combat zone. During one of history's most brutal battles.
Sekitanki looked at the chaos around him—soldiers dying, buildings collapsing, the machinery of industrial warfare grinding human beings into meat and memory—and felt something break inside him.
Not his will to survive. That was too ingrained now. But his hope of simple homecoming. His dream of walking into his mother's kitchen and saying "I'm sorry."
This isn't home. This is hell. And I have to survive it before I can find home. Another explosion. Closer. The wall he'd hidden behind cracked, beginning to collapse. He ran.
Through smoke and fire and the screaming chaos of mechanized warfare. Past soldiers who barely registered his presence, too focused on their own survival to care about a civilian who shouldn't exist here. Through streets that were modern in construction but ancient in their state—destroyed by weapons that made medieval warfare look like children's games.
The Carboniferous was simpler. At least insects just tried to eat you. They didn't have artillery. Didn't have machine guns. Didn't have the capacity for industrial-scale slaughter.
A tank emerged from the smoke ahead. American Sherman, treads churning rubble, main gun tracking targets. Sekitanki dove into a crater as the gun fired, the shell passing overhead so close he felt its wake. When he looked up, he saw them: American soldiers advancing, using the tank for cover, weapons ready. And behind him: Japanese soldiers preparing a desperate last stand, knowing they were outgunned, outmanned, but fighting anyway because surrender meant dishonor and dishonor was worse than death.
I'm caught between armies. Between two forces that will kill me without hesitation because I don't belong to either side. Just like the Carboniferous. Just like the Kamakura Period. Always caught between. Always the thing that doesn't fit. But he'd survived not fitting before. Sekitanki gripped the demon blade—Kanemoto's masterwork, the sword that had defeated legendary warriors—and prepared to do what he did best:
Survive the impossible one more time.
TO BE CONTINUED... [SEASON 3: "THE GHOSTS OF WAR"]
The teenager who conquered prehistory and feudal Japan must now survive the most brutal conflict in human history—World War II's final days, where the monsters wear human faces and the real demons are the ones we create ourselves.
Coming Next: Episode 13 - "The Burning Sky"