Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He was standing in a small pool of bright light. Looking above, there was no discernible source for that, and he shivered in his thin t-shirt and hand-me-down shorts, all covered in soot. Still, it was better than where he had come from…

… Wait, where have I come from? I can’t remember. No… I don’t want to remember. He hurt me. She said he was my brother. She said that. I’m supposed to obey her. I’m supposed to obey all the grown-ups…

She was wrong.

He’s not my brother. He’s…

He’s a monster. They’re all monsters.

He’s also not here…

Where is here…?

The shelves stretched upwards into the darkness both in front and behind him, making a dark corridor leading to who knew where. They were filled with books of all kinds, colours and sizes as far as the eye could see. A sight he hadn’t seen since school: more than one book at once.

No, since his grandparents’ house… they had a library full of books, and his grandmother let him take one from time to time and try to work out the words from the letters that told of worlds beyond his imagination. Or she read to him before bedtime from one of her favourites.

Then all the books and toys and school - he’d liked starting school for the first time - had been taken away. His grandparents had been taken away from him, too, after his mother had shoehorned herself back into his life. NanNan and Grumps had told him that she’d had to go to hospital for a long time when he was little, because she was very sick, and believed things that weren’t true.

Wild stories about when she was young, and they thought she’d be sensible, be safe; but then she ‘got mixed up with the wrong crowd’, his grandmother said… 'And that was after all the trouble with-' but at this part she broke off her stilted recitation and refused to speak of it again…

But now she was out. And she wanted him back. They hadn’t wanted her to see him, but she was persistent. She was going to live on a farm in the countryside, and would he like to see all the chickens and pigs and cows for real, and not just in a book or on the TV?

Just for the day, she’d said. Just us…

But it wasn’t for just one day, and it wasn’t just them…

🐱✨💨

A burning hand had grabbed his arm; he’d screamed, kicked his not-brother’s hand away, clutching the book that had been confiscated… 

It was the same book he’d recovered from his school bag, and stashed in a secret place so he could read it whenever he was punished for not following the rules. They’d locked him in the cellar often, sometimes for hours…

The first time they did it - the day after he’d arrived - he’d found his satchel down there still unchecked for contraband or other forbidden belongings; he’d moved the book to behind a loose brick before they realised it existed. And ate his day-old packed lunch too. He hid the chocolate bar with the book in case it happened again.

It did.

After a while he realised that his mother wasn’t going to take him home; his grandparents were not going to come and get him. This was his new home, she'd said.

He hated it. He hated the other ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. And he began to hate her too.

Reading the book was one of only two escapes: the other was the wetlands that surrounded the farm, because the farm animals - especially the cows and pigs - were so large and scary. Sheep were a little better but they had weird lozenge-shaped pupils. The chickens were a type that seemed to fight each other and everyone else. And there were two kinds of dogs: ones bred to herd the sheep, and other, more powerful ones bred for other, scarier things…

The wetlands were beautiful though: full of life that the others didn’t seem to care about or actively cleared and killed, and totally different from the small city he’d been brought up in, though he knew other cities weren’t as green as his: he’d seen that on the TV.

It was also so flat that you could see a cat at a thousand paces, and there was always a watchful pair of eyes; he was way too small to reach anywhere large enough that wasn’t part of the not-brothers and not-sisters ‘flock’ that his mother had joined before someone caught up with him… and then it was back to the cellar again.

His old life became a distant dream after a few weeks…

Until the last day, when his mother was locked down there with him too. She was a mess when they pulled her out and left him behind, but he had been given a photograph of his grandparents by her that she’d managed to hide, with an address on the back. Told him that she was sorry and she should never have brought him here.

Told him that his grandparents and the police were looking for him, but she’d been caught trying to escape and get a message out. He hid the photograph in the back of the book when she had gone.

That night they came for him too, but he’d kicked the lantern out of the not-brother’s hand in the struggle to take him back upstairs, and he’d hidden in the back of the room, near to where his secret book was kept, which he took from the hiding spot and held onto to comfort himself. The lamp had landed on a bale of brittle-dry straw heaped next to one of the roof supports, that ignited in an instant as the oil seeped out of the broken base; the resulting fire made the man panic and he dithered for a few seconds as the fire spread.

At first he tried to beat it out with a piece of heavy sacking, but that only fanned the flames; the not-a-brother-at-all rushed back up the wooden steps, bringing a bucket of water back with him after a minute or two, but they fell at the bottom when the last couple of stairs gave way due to the flames licking their way up the bone-dry plank that helped to hold up the floor of the room above, spreading across the tarred beams in the ceiling, and back down the opposite wall where the stairs were.

The roof came down on the man a few seconds after that.

He crept forwards to see if the man was moving at all, still hugging the book, but an arm came out from under the beam with a screech and latched onto his own. He didn’t know where he found the strength to kick the arm away but he managed it, falling onto his back with the effort, then he scrambled backwards, out of the burning man’s reach.

Fire was dangerous. Everyone knew that. And even though he’d started it, it was an accident. But they couldn’t punish him anymore: what could they do to punish him for yet another mistake or accident that they usually blamed on him? Throw him in the cellar again? 

There was no way in or out, and the man who usually put him down here was-

He sobbed and held the old book open and to his face to hide the scene playing out in front of him in the cellar, to block out the horrible sight of the not-brother screaming under the wooden beam that had crashed onto him.

To shield himself from the heat and the flames…

He’d shuffled even further backwards into the corner again, away from the smoke and blazing debris as all the recent ‘contraband’ from newer recruits had burst into flames too. Only the back wall, damp and built into the only small hill in the area, was untouched now, and he began to cough from the fumes.

No-one else in the building seemed to either dare or care to find out what had happened. As soon as the floor above collapsed, they’d probably all run away, or flapped around like the ornery chickens.

He looked at the words in the book, eyes swimming with tears from both the smoke and pain, trying to remember the time his grandmother had first read the chapter on that particular page, where the girl in the book had fallen down a large hole in the ground…

… suddenly finding himself falling too: away from all the clamour of the cellar and down into a different kind of darkness.

Down, down, down, for a very long time…

🐱✨💨

… and ended up here.

Wherever here was…

There was a noise. It came from somewhere in the dark beyond the safe-seeming pool of light. The sound of padding feet. The noise appeared to be coming from somewhere behind the shelves. Is there another shelf of books behind this one?

Occasionally it stalled, and instead there was the sound of someone - or something? - humming to itself. The tune was a touch growly, and had a slight nasal tone, but it seemed to be a happy melody rather than a sad or scary one.

But then it stopped, and there was a series of huffs and sniffing, and the sound of something scrabbling up on the other side of the bookshelf.

“You’re a little young to be creeping around here in the middle of the night.” Two glowing eyes and a toothy grin appeared from out of an empty space on a shelf at head height and just out of arms reach. “I wasn’t expecting someone like you to be in the Stacks for-” The voice paused: the pair of eyes appeared to zoom in on something to his left, where the pain came from. “Ohh. Well, that changes everything: you saved it. Mostly: I guess the cover being slightly foxed - or in this case, fuliginous - adds character, or so I’m told… And in doing so, you saved yourself too… how remarkable…”

He looked down at his left hand. His fingers tightly grasped a book, but he couldn’t see what the title was; soot peppered the red fabric-covered board sleeve and he could barely make out the letters A, N and D on the spine. They glimmered a faint gold in the light. He felt as if he should know the title - it was his book, well, his grandmother’s book after all - but it was on the tip of his mind. 

He could also see that his left arm had an angry-looking red blister on it. Oh. So that’s why it hurts… he thought, dully.

The creature - for it was no mere human that stretched out in the space between the tomes - yawned, showing off yet more teeth, and more of its face came into view: It seemed to be taking the shape of a large and well-fed tabby cat, with wide saucer-shaped eyes. It was larger than any common domestic housecat had any right to be; its grin became wider, which (given he could remember seeing plenty of cats before in both real life, and descriptions in books), reminded him of only one single description of a particular cat. Ever. The one that was in his satchel when his mother had come to the school and stolen him away…

This is the same book! He finally remembered. I got it back, somehow: this is the only talking cat I know about that isn’t from a nursery rhyme or baby book…

The cat jumped down from the bookshelf and sauntered up to him with a lazy but confident strut; it lifted its paw and inspected its nails, then its eyes darted from one side to another, looking at some floating speck of dust in the space between spaces. Then its eyes snapped back to regard him and blinked a couple of times, before speaking again. “Oh, yes: you… I suppose you had better come with me. I hope Henry’s up to taking visitors: half the time it’s as if I’m speaking to a Troglodyte. Well, he does love getting into character… if that’s what you can call it…” It turned, swished its tail and swaggered off into the dark.

He wasn’t sure what to do: stay here, where it was… well, not exactly safe, but… Not exactly anywhere I can get food or drink either. If I stand here forever, I’ll- He shrugged and decided to walk after the talking cat into the darkness.

It wasn’t as dark as he first thought, just dim: the bright light he’d been standing under previously masked the low-level ambient light coming from the books themselves. The outlines of the books glowed with a faint sheen, as if lit by starlight, and he could see the furry tail of the feline in front of him again.

It was already beginning to feel many degrees better than the place he’d been before that was slowly slipping from his mind.

“Good! It’s not far ahead,” the cat looked back over its shoulder and remarked over it. “But there are some turns coming up, so stay close. I mean that part: it’s easy to get lost down here unless you know what you’re doing, and you obviously don’t just yet…”

He stuck like glue to the cat’s meandering path, and soon they came to a ‘clearing’ in the forest of books: a man with a long black frock-coat and a top hat loomed into view; he was reading a book of his own, and when he saw the odd pair he jumped to his feet and bowed low.

“Ah, Henry!” the stripy cat beamed with that unnerving grin. “Could you please see to this boy: a burn, I gather. He saved one of my first editions so I’m willing to give him a pass for the day.”

“Is that so?” The man twiddled his moustache in thought and brought out a pair of old-fashioned spectacles from an inner pocket. He shrunk away from the man, but the cat was behind him and he knew somehow that running off into the maze of books would be a very bad idea. 

“Come now, child: I will not bite. Today, that is.” He seemed a little sad, but cheered up almost instantly as he crouched to his level.. “You have found me in a most pleasant state this evening, so I will endeavour to help you. Just sit on this stack here and I’ll take a look…” Reluctantly, he sat down and held his arm out for the man to see; Henry was careful and gentle, and it didn’t feel so bad after all.

After some cooling ointment and a bandage - “It’ll scar, but not so badly it’ll cause you any further problems” - he thanked the man in the top hat and was given a lollipop in exchange.

“Come, child: it’s past the time where all children should be in bed.” The cat looked at him speculatively, then the book in his hand, which he’d never let go of. “Obviously, I can’t take you back where you came from, or you’ll end up in a worse condition than before… is there anyone else I can deliver you to?”

Deliver… like a letter? There was somewhere… “There’s… a photo. An address…” He opened the book to the very last page and showed the cat, before putting it back. “That’s my real home.”

“As you wish, dear reader,” the cat smirked and jumped up onto his shoulder, which was odd, as it appeared a lot smaller now. “Now, hold on tight!”

🐱✨💨

“Now, don’t you be coming back down here until you’re good and ready, do you hear?” the cat that sat next to him on the doorstep of his grandmother’s house warned him, before springing down the steps and stalking off along the path to the front gate.

“Huh?” He was getting tired and couldn’t remember why he was talking to a cat in the first place… something to do with one of NanNan’s books? Why was he sitting outside the house in someone else’s pyjamas?

But the Cheshire Cat kept on walking and disappeared into the dark of a shadow cast by a small shrub; it looked back once, eyes gleaming, and seemed to fade from view, the grin being the last part to go. Just like in the book…

The porch light came on, and he was bathed in light from above. The door behind him opened as he peered out into the night, looking for something that shouldn’t exist…

Don’t tell anyone, something in his head told him as he stood up and buried his sooty face into his grandmother’s middle as she cried in surprise, then relief at his return. The hospital didn’t help her: they’ll think you’re mad too, like the Hare and the Hatter… they’ll send you away for real…

Just forget about it… for now…

🐱✨💨

Chapter Text

Donny had felt drawn to it as soon as he’d seen the pictures in the brochure he’d been supplied with along with a permission slip for the destination of the school history trip, scheduled for just before the end of term.

Twenty thousand years of history had been found underneath a proposed site for an elementary school in S City when they’d dug the foundations; they apparently knew there might have been some archaeological finds down there… but they weren’t prepared for the sheer number of fossilised trees, evidence for a small human settlement and other remains that had been caught in a massive volcanic mud slide all those years ago.

They’d moved the school proposal elsewhere of course, and instead built a museum over the Underground Forest, charging visitors and school parties to see the perfectly preserved fallen spruces to fund continued research into the site. 

It called to him like nothing else had in his life so far…

More so than when Shigechi had persuaded him to tag along last summer - only a couple of months ago - with a metal detector (which the rotund classmate had bought with a combination of birthday money and supplements from some ‘little friends’ of his); they’d tested it first on Shigechi’s back yard until his mother had chased them out and they’d taken themselves to the fields near where the strange guy who lived by himself on an unused electricity pylon. There was plenty of space out there to find things, he’d said, and technically they’d also be supervised…

That was the first time that Donny had met the weird masked man called T.K, but amongst certain circles he was talked about regularly. He was a part of just one of the slightly off-kilter landmarks and characters that dotted the landscape around Morioh: some he’d been told about by a couple of the other kids at school when he’d first moved there. Some he’d been warned about (in an exaggerated way, by his reckoning) by the Speedwagon Foundation itself: the alley next to Owsons that sometimes was there and sometimes wasn’t was strictly off limits, and he was to keep an eye on his surroundings anywhere near the place to avoid accidentally stepping into it.

Shigechi had been especially polite to the unusual hermit (like he was with most adults), and - very carefully, the blond noticed - handed over a small paper bag which contained some rice crackers and sheets of seaweed. T.K. went absolutely nuts over them; Donny could feel the enthusiasm spill through the guy’s mask and they were told: yes, they could dig for treasure around the base of the pylon, as long as they kept clear of the organic garden and sprinkler system. And Shigechi beamed back with that wide (mostly) innocent smile too (but Donny could see a weird glint in his eye).

They’d spent the next two hours poring over the site: their first surface pass of the terrain yielded small finds of coins, a broken zip slider, a few rusty nails (T.K. who was watching from his perch some way up his tower, hollered down that one or two of those might be his from when he dropped them from a height and couldn’t find them), and a 90s Kamen Rider pin badge with the pin broken off. T.K. said he’d take that off their hands for 500 yen, which was cool, as it would pay for snacks for the pair of them later.

For the second pass, Donny had a large trowel and would dig little holes where Shigechi would be pointing his detector already; apparently his special ‘knack’ for finding small things topped out at a certain depth and mass, which is why he’d splashed out on something a bit more reliable, (as long as it was metal).

Donny was still a little perplexed about how his friend had found some of the non-metal things in the field… to which the other boy grinned and said that when the time came, he’d know how… but he wasn’t allowed to tell him. Not yet.

Although occasionally he’d caught something moving out of the corner of his eye… but when he spun round to catch it more fully, it wasn’t there anymore… And he'd found a startlingly strange selection of stuff himself as he'd dug around too...

There were a lot of things that the grown ups and some of the kids around town weren’t telling him just yet, but they’d explained that sometime in the near future that would change. Until then, Donny stuck like glue to Shigechi (which was easy to explain as they shared classes), and waited for him to either let something slip, or do something odd right in front of him. Because he was definitely up to something right now, just like that weird comic-writing dude… and the horde of other odd characters in this place that was like a Japanese version of Eerie, Indiana…

He just wished he could see what it was. What they were still all hiding from him…

What had intrigued the American boy the most about Shigechi was his semi-innocent exuberance: he was short and dumpy with a weirdly-shaped head, but he was, for the most part, happy. He wasn’t particularly bright, but he enjoyed simple things, adored his parents, and, after an initial ‘misunderstanding’ (as he’d put it) with a couple of older boys in high school who were ‘like him’ - one of which was also a kind of nephew of Donny’s - finally had friends too. Shigechi had - in his own way - been the biggest help in finding a serial killer, although he’d been hurt and missed a day and a half of school from all the shock. That was a couple of years ago now, though, he’d said.

Donny also wished he’d had parents and friends like that growing up. (Although probably not the being hurt part.)

⛏️🕳️

It still amazed and delighted Donny that he’d been whisked away from his uncaring mom and lecherous stepdad and placed in a school at the other side of the world, somehow magically been ‘taught’ Japanese by a guy with pen nibs for earrings and then told a heavily edited version of the current state of affairs about how his biological father was a serial *insert list of really bad things here* that tried to kill a lot of people - succeeding in some cases - including harming a rather nice middle-aged lady that had almost died; she was just about old enough to be his grandmother, but instead was his great-niece. And half-sister to that older kid too (his new family was weird…). He’d met her once and she’d cooked for him: how could anyone want to kill such a nice happy lady? Her son - who he’d met a few more times - was a very quiet and grumpy kind of guy, but even he cared about what he got up to, unlike his old family…

Donny also wished that they’d found him sooner. They told him that it was a miracle that they had someone ‘on the ground in the area’ when all those bizarre sets of coincidences had happened that nearly ended up with him being thrown into jail. And for telling the truth too: he’d been so lucky that someone in a lower year at his current middle school was on vacation there last year, around Christmas time. And that was only around a week before his fourteenth birthday…

Apparently this other kid - Hayato or something from a couple of years below - had been taking camcorder shots of the city he’d run away to, and had evidence that the pair of donated baseball shoes really did drop ‘out of the sky’. The kid had seen the news, put two and two together, and called some global organisation also related to his new family; they made all the ‘fuss’ disappear, (probably with a lot of money and yet more connections), and offered him a home away from the States for a while.

He almost snapped off their hands to get away from his old family upon finding out he had another one: he got a real buzz from knowing there were a bunch of secrets that until now, he would never have been able to find out without help. And they had promised to tell him much more, doled out in manageable parcels of information, as he grew up.

And being at a nice school where he had a friend or two for the first time in his life was awesome. Even though he did stick out a little bit…

⛏️🕳️

Of course, Donny told Shigechi about the feelings first of all, being one: the closest friend in his year, and two: someone who was also going on the trip.

They’d buddied up on the train, and with twenty-odd other middle school kids, they walked in a long line to the museum from the nearest station. As they filed down the unassuming steps into the concrete tunnel leading to the exhibit, Donny got a sense of a connection to the space around himself, as if he could feel the layers peeling away as he descended into the earth.

The class had just missed the short information movie that played three times an hour, so they were taken further into the site to see the petrified trees first. They’d read the exhibit information on the walls as they’d moved around a gantry that overlooked the fallen forest below, seen the finds of pottery shards and arrow heads displayed in little glass cabinets with a description of how there used to be a small encampment of Stone Age people living right here, seen the specimen of deer poop left behind when all hell broke loose at some point twenty thousand years ago… and all those skulls…

Fascinated by the interactive exhibit of the ancient tree root for people to feel, Donny reached out to touch the example piece of half-fossilised spruce when it was his turn, was amazed at the weird half-spongy texture, and-

Shigechi - who’d already touched the specimen and whose eyes were now darting around the room - noticed first.

“Donny! These are real trees! And that’s a real deer!” He pointed at something behind the other boy’s head: Donny stepped out of the line for the next pupil and turned to see what Shigechi’s attention had been distracted by… and his mouth dropped open.

Somehow, in this cave of a museum, Donny knew that he’d been the one that had wanted to see what it was like all those years ago for real; he knew that he’d brought the entire class back with him to when the forest still stood. And he also knew that they had to leave quickly, as his mind was filling up with the history of what actually happened on the day all the trees were flattened, aided by the surrounding exhibits. When the mud came rolling in and everything not fast enough was-

⛏️🕳️

“Donny!” Shigechi was in his face and shaking his shoulder; there was genuine not-quite-fear there, which was unlike the smaller boy’s usual happy-go-lucky self. “You have to turn it off! Everyone else can see this! That’s not what usually happens, well, apart from…”

“How?!” Donny looked at his hands as his friend was reeling off a list he wasn’t really paying attention to: a ghost of a hand followed his right one like afterimages. “Shigechi, I know I did this, somehow… but I don’t know how! So how do I turn it off if I don’t know how I turned it on?!”

“Gah! I told them a couple of months ago that you were nearly there, but everyone’s been busy with the Italia stuff, and then checking that those idiots in New York weren’t Stand Users either; I heard that from Josuke two weeks ago…”

Stand Users… huh… I’m sure I heard that before, somewhere… but at the time I didn’t really get what anyone was saying. I was just happy that I had a second chance. Hey, wasn’t my father supposed to be a Stand User or something? Donny couldn’t remember much about that, as it was in the middle of a long list of things that he’d only half-listened to because everyone had said they’d fill him in later if anything important happened…

Well, now something important had happened, and he only had one other person around who seemed to know more than he did…

“... Anyhow,” Shigechi finally took a breath and turned back to him, “what is your Stand? Have we gone back in time or something?”

“Uhh… I think it’s some kind of memory, but…” Donny remembered about the imminent catastrophe. “... uh, there’s something really bad that’s gonna happen if we don’t get outta here right now: the thing that made all these trees and other shit get buried in the first place!”

“Whuh-what…?” The other boy's face was suddenly more wary.

“Everyone’s gonna die except for that deer, Shigechi!” The blond could feel the panic rising from the certainty that he hadn’t a clue what to do; he started to breathe more heavily, and that only made him notice the outdoor scents and other surroundings even more.

“Ok ok, well, uh…” Shigechi started to think as the rest of the class had noticed that they weren’t in Kansas anymore and the noise level rose. “Well, usually if I call out [Harvest], it’s because I want something bad. Or someone’s trying to hurt me, but, uh, we’ll leave that one for now as I don’t think anything is doing that…”

“[Harvest]?” Is this what everyone hasn’t been telling me…?

“Oh, right… yeah: you haven’t really seen these guys before, have you…? Or you nearly haven’t…” His plump classmate frowned for a second and these brightly-coloured bugs began popping up all over the place; no-one else appeared to see them, however. Not that they would have noticed, given the circumstances. “I think you were starting to notice when we dug all those holes near T.K.’s tower, but as I said, everyone was a bit busy…”

The things I thought I saw but weren’t really there… were actually there after all!

“… My Stand just collects lots of little things, and brings them back to me: coins, tokens; other things. Ended up with a share of some lottery money a while back, too.” Shigechi’s eyes lit up as he described what the bugs could do. “Oh, and they can defend me too: that’s very useful…”

“Shigechi, how does that help with everyone replaying the ‘Last Days of the Underground Forest’ right now?!”

“Don’t panic, Donny,” his friend seemed to have cheered up a little. “Just think: like I wanted stuff… What did you want just before this happened? How did it feel?”

The blond thought for a few seconds, aware of the time left until- “I wanted to see what it was really like when the trees were still alive, and the people that those skulls belonged to…" he began slowly, casting his mind back to when they had entered the museum. "I touched the tree root and wondered how it would feel to-” Donny’s eyes widened with realisation. I wanted to know what the place knew; what it remembered… and it happened…

“So…?” Shigechi tried to lead him to some sort of conclusion.

“So… either you jump on the deer, but that probably only helps one person, or…”

“Or…?” Shigechi seemed to be fascinated with him, and slightly smug too.

“Or… I want it to go away: I negate my desire, I guess? I might have wanted it at first, but I don’t want it anymore, not like this: I don’t want my whole class to die. That would be bad, and it would make a lot of people unhappy. Even me: I like being here and I don’t want that to stop…”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Shigechi shouted as the background noise rose to the point where they realised that a loud rumbling noise was coming closer, and trees in the distance were beginning to fall. People dressed in handmade clothes and other ornaments came running out of the trees towards them. “Tell it all to go away: that you don’t want this anymore!”

Donny crouched, scrunched his eyes shut and concentrated. I want to go home. I want everyone else to come home with me. I don’t want to see this memory anymore. The rumbling was almost on top of them and people were beginning to scream. Please, just… Go Away! I don’t WANT this. END IT! JUST… 

“STOP!!!”

The artificial lights came back, and all was (mostly) quiet. The other teenagers appeared to be moaning quietly or cowering around the room as Donny reopened his eyes and stood up; he also noticed a ghostly hand retract back into his own from where it had been touching the tree root on display. And Shigechi’s bugs disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived as well.

“That was a bit close,” Shigechi muttered as he curled himself out of his own ball, “but no-one listens to Shigechi, no…”

“I listened.” Donny held out a hand and helped his school friend to his feet. “And… thanks. For sticking by me and helping when I thought I was losing it…”

“Ah, yeah,” Shigechi threw a reminiscent kind of smile at him then. “Using a Stand for the first time’ll do that, sometimes. Now you know… you’d better get used to a lot more attention; there’s always a bigger and badder Stand out there, if you’re not careful… but as long as we use 'em for cool stuff that doesn’t harm anyone else, knock yourself out.”

They were led back to the train station in almost complete silence, and it wasn’t until they were sitting on the train back to Morioh that Donny turned to his friend and enquired in a low voice, so none of the rest of the class or teachers could hear.

“What kind of cool stuff?” 

Shigechi just gave one of his innocent yet almost smug grins and took a deep breath. “Well…”

⛏️🕳️

Afterwards, to everyone else, it was explained away as being a particularly meticulous reconstruction of the day of the catastrophe by some irresponsible film students and a state of the art projection camera… but Donny and Shigechi knew better…

* * *