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“You could stop it.”
Words Haruto almost doesn’t want to hear.
Almost.
“Could” is a funny word. Past tense, it can mean a failed choice. After all, if he “could have”, then he didn’t. Things went wrong. He failed .
On the other hand, here, it means a chance.
The rounds have made it to him, by the time Another Beast is running around eating human souls. Sanjo’s Makito is a dangerous man. He’s a monster, more like, and he’s been in the trade since Shin.
(Sometimes Haruto thinks about what it means to be a monster. To be just like one’s enemy. Most don’t like to talk about it out loud, but then again, they all have different ways of handling what it means.
They all have different things which it means just in general, too.)
“I’m not going to—”
“Be used by an evil man like me?” Sanjo asks, his grin still firmly in place. “Well, not again, at least.”
Guilt rage loss despite the years and Koyomi he did it for her a mistake all those people what did he do?
Sanjo laughs.
“That’s what I thought,” he says. “You know, we did fund Fueki for a time, but he was too unstable. Too unstable for Foundation X! What a concept. But it was useful. He was useful.”
Haruto doesn’t trust any of this, but this has to somehow be his fault.
That’s the other part.
Sanjo’s gotten personal.
( “Sh-she said he wasn’t always like this,” Gentaro had managed to explain over the phone. He’s had to survive his own mess, even with only two actual Another Riders in his general wheelhouse. “Something changed. I think it happened back in 2018.” )
“What do you want from me?” Haruto asks, voice deadly serious.
Sanjo holds up a… RideWatch.
2012
The form—
“Another White Wizard,” Sanjo says, “you know Wizard can’t fight Another Beast, so give it another chance.”
Haruto stares.
“That’s crazy,” he says. Sanjo hmms.
“Maybe,” he says. “But those bodies. They’re piling up. You of all people should know a body doesn’t last long without a soul.”
She had a damn soul. She never quite moves or felt like a human but she could love and regret and smile and—
“Oh, looks like I struck a nerve, there,” Sanjo says. “I’d apologize, but I don’t care. I just think you’d be most suited. Don’t you already have one of these inside of you?”
He tosses the RideWatch, casually.
Haruto catches it on instinct. He debates dropping it, but that’s a little too much.
If this man doesn’t stop talking like that, though, Haruto swears—
“The way I see it,” Sanjo says. “Is that you have a choice. You can do what’s right for a hero, hold up your morals and hope they find a solution. Or you can take the RideWatch and see what real power feels like.”
He leaves. And Haruto just… stands there.
“Be careful. He keeps you on your toes. Tricks you into agreeing.”
Good advice that’s been passed around for the past year or so. Unfortunately, Haruto thinks it’s a bit too true.
There’s a certain understanding within the hero community that heroes help each other, but if they know the others have it handled, they leave.
It’s not because anyone doesn’t care, it’s just a mix of fate and skill set. Haruto doubts he would have been much good dealing with, say, a problem needing video game doctors.
…Unfortunately, this understanding has fallen apart ever since what they now know to be a reset. So much good came for so many people.
But nothing really mattered. Not for Haruto, personally. And he doesn’t… it’s not about him. This whole mess… there’s this odd feeling. Get involved Or don’t.
(But Sanjo doesn’t leave true choice.)
If Haruto goes through with this, willingly, he may lose control, and then the problems all just gets worse.
Or he waits, and more people may have no body to return to.
(A week now, of hospital visits. They say it’s like the bodies are shutting down slowly.)
The choice is his.