trans_9 | Things I need to start understanding [closed]

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Things I need to start understanding [closed]

Sakura sighed, pushing her hair back off her forehead. The time inconsistencies were troubling, but there was little she could do with the Time Dragons officially back in place on Era. MedBay didn't need her for the moment, which left her for time to do something she'd wanted to since picking up his broadcast on the Omnicomm. She sent Ren a brief message, letting her know she was on her way home. Taking the grav tubes up to the proper level, she didn't even bother pretending she was working at normal speed. Not that anyone she passed was likely to notice for long. There was no one even to pass on her chosen pathway through the ship, humid air clearing only slightly as she entered the City proper.

She didn't slow down until she found herself on the short expanse of street in front of the Atori Teahouse. Windblown hair fell more or less in place as she smoothed it down, walking the last remaining distance. There was a lot more she needed to understand about all her roommates, and to be fair, that they needed to know about her. She might as well start with Ren, her concern for him and the events linked to the clock being very real.

She called out as she slipped in through the door. "Ren?"

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It had become a habit of Ren's that he grabbed a cup of tea whenever he was in for a heavy talk. And it looked like this was going to be an especially rough one, so he'd made a pot of a rather strong blend that he'd picked up during Shore Leave--though this time, he was sure he hadn't ended up with anything potentially dangerous, like listening to the clock.

"I'm here," he said, bringing the pot and two cups to the table. "Tea, if you want it."

Approaching the table, Sakura wished she could sigh again, but the sentiment wasn't quite right. "Thank you," she said, smiling for a brief moment. Tea sounded wonderful, in a kind of comforting way she could appreciate far more often than anything else. Like food! Food not disguised by the sensoriums, that was.

She sat, waiting for him to speak first. She might have wanted to initiate this conversation, and she did want to better understand the decks and complicated parts of his history that related to anything important on ship, but it wasn't a step she was used to taking. "Should I be wondering at what kind?"

"Black tea," Ren answered. "It lasts longer, so I bought more of it."

And his patience for small talk was just about up. He prefered to either address an issue or flat-out walk away from it. He removed his deck and set it on the table and asked, "Where do you want me to start?"

She preferred the direct approach as well. "Where-ever makes the most sense for you." She'd parse it together as he went along, or ask what he needed to in order to make sense of what he'd be talking about. Determining a start-point wouldn't be as helpful when she didn't know what would make a good one.

Oddly enough, the beginning was the easiest part. It was the only thing that hadn't changed.

"It started with two children, Kanzaki Shiro and Yui," he explained. "As far as I can tell, they were treated badly by their parents and locked up in a room all day, where all they did was draw. Somehow, they managed to create another world, the Mirror World, and Monsters to protect them. Then one day, Yui died from neglect. In order to save her, her brother made a deal with the version of her from the Mirror World. She'd live, but only until she turned twenty."

Sakura sat back, absorbing this beginning. Child neglect wasn't uncommon in a world where war orphans were unhappily common in prior decades. The last sixteen years had been the longest peace in recent history, and even then, minor skirmishes generated even more orphans.

"So he brought her back temporarily, with the help of the world they created while in that room."

"As far as I can tell," Ren answered. "All I know about that is from what Yui figured out, and she blocked out a lot of her memories of that time." And understandably so.

"When their parents died, they were separated. Yui stayed with her aunt in Japan while her brother was sent to live with other relatives overseas. As he got older, he began researching a way to save her. He discovered that there was a power in the Mirror World that would grant him any wish, but there was a price. It's vague from there, but somewhere, I remember that it needed the lives of people to pay into it, so he set up the Rider War. He created the Advent Card decks so thirteen people could transform into Kamen Riders and enter the Mirror World. The object was for us to kill each other to feed into the power, and the last one standing would receive whatever he wished for."

The next part was probably the hardest for him, so he paused to take a drink and let Sakura ask any questions.

"Yet if he was looking to access this wish, and only the winner of the fights between the Kamen Riders left standing at the end receives whatever they wish for... did he enter as one of the riders himself?"

She wasn't happy, holding her tea between both hands. It was bribery like that, playing on whatever motivated people the most in order to manipulate the end goal, that had been outlawed in most nations years ago. The shinobi villages might not have had wishes to grant, but there were other things. Attainable goals. "How did he chose people to be riders?"

"No, he only manipulated others to do it for him," Ren explained with a sigh. "I don't understand much of it, but apparently he recreated what happened with Yui himself, only he couldn't leave the Mirror World for long periods of time. Because he'd sacrificed his form in the real world, he couldn't fight as a Rider. But to make sure that he'd win, he created Odin as the most powerful of all the Riders--so powerful that it completely took over the user's will, making them Kanzaki's puppet. As you saw with me." It was a sore spot over the effects of the clock and his worst timeline.

"Everyone he chose to be a Rider wanted something. He preyed on people at their worst moments or manipulated situations to make them want to win. The only exception was Kido Shinji, Ryuki, who stumbled into it by accident. As for me..."

And here came the hard part, but Ren had a lot of practice in pretending he wasn't affected by emotional trauma. In as calm a voice as possible, he admitted, "I don't know if it was by chance, or if Kanzaki targeted her to find me, but my fiancee was used in an experiment to access the Mirror World. I arrived just as a Monster emerged and attacked her, and Kanzaki told me that the only way to save her was to become a Rider and fight."

She nodded more slowly when he brought up Odin, sipping her tea. (She didn't want it going to waste.) "He expected to win." Manipulating others, taking over their will, and stacking the entire game toward the one Rider who was supposed to wish for what they most desired. "Through Odin."

He was remarkably calm as he told her what had brought him into this game. She couldn't say she was surprised. Ren was a collected person. He reminded her very strongly of people she respected, admired, and even loved back home. The shinobi were, by and large, repressers. Lying about how they felt for the things that really hurt was a matter of course. Politely not commenting when you noticed the hurt behind someone else's words.

Had it been being cornered, had it been accident, either way he'd been forced into participating on the chance of saving a loved one. The one he would have married. Upset roiled in her stomach, at this Kanzaki. There was no winning in stealing the hopes and lives of others in order to bring back the one you loved. His pain didn't justify playing off the pains of others, not to her. Not when she's seen how that breaks down again and again.

"What's her name?" She was surprised she ended up asking, even in her quiet contemplation.

"Eri," he answered softly--the only amount of emotion he'd allow himself to betray.

After a moment, he started again, knowing if he didn't now, he never would. "I fought on my own for a little while after that, and then I met Yui by chance. I realized she was Kanzaki's sister, and that would give me an edge. Eventually, we met Kido, who decided to become a Rider to save the people caught in the middle of the battle. He wanted to stop the fighting altogether. And even though I knew I had to fight him one day, both he and Yui became my friends."

"What ended up happening?" She almost didn't ask, thinking of what it had to mean, to make friends with the people that you were supposed to have to fight in order to obtain what mattered most to you. At the very least, becoming friends with the person that your greatest obstacle wanted to save -- and moreover, being friends with them.

She stored Eri's name away in memory, saying nothing else on that subject. Kurenai came briefly to mind, then was dismissed, just like so many other memories from home.

"I fought Kido a few times," Ren admitted, trying to keep to only one timeline. "It always ended in a draw, and I could never make myself do what I had to. Eventually, it got easier to accept that I wouldn't be able to. I know what I need to do, but I suppose Kido will just find an alternative, like he always does."

But that was only one iteration of the Rider War, and trying to get into the rest was going to be a mess. Still, he explained. "It doesn't seem like it mattered, though. Whenever one of us got close to winning or something went wrong, Kanzaki used Odin's power to reset time."

She could empathize with being unable to follow through with what you were "supposed" to do. Sakura knew that feeling intimately. It's where her dependence on Naruto rose to the foreground yet again.

I supposed Kido will find an alternative, like he always does. Naruto did that for her, didn't he? For their entire village, even before the village cared that he tried? "Kido sounds a lot like someone I know. Finding the ways other than the obvious through a problem."

"What end result was Kanzaki hoping for, if he kept resetting time like that?"

Here, Ren had to shrug. He honestly didn't know, no matter how many times he'd gone through it. He'd never been able to figure out Kanzaki completely--only reason things based on what everyone had found out.

"To save Yui, I suppose. I don't know what specifically made him reset each time. If it was to keep Kido and me out of the picture, he had plenty of opportunities for that, but he let us get farther. Though as long as the Odin deck survived, he always had his trump card. Maybe resetting everything was a last resort, whenever we did manage to defeat Odin."

"How many times has that happened, to date?" TO the date from which Ren most recently remembered. "How does Phillip fit in?"

That second question more along the lines of trying to understand the riders.

"Too many to count," Ren admitted. "There are at least five I can remember clearly, along with deja vu, where there might have been other resets. I can't be sure about the rest." It got hazier the farther back he went. He wasn't sure if he remembered the original course of events at all.

"As for Philip, he wasn't a Rider in our war. I met him on the ship. He has the ability to access information on anyone or anything, and that's how he learned what he did about me."

She nodded, finding it much easier to believe and understand this after recent events. "Did Kanzaki run all the wars?" Wait. "And is Phillip from before or after your war?"

At least Phillip's understanding made sense, if accessing information on anyone, or anything? "How exactly is Phillip able to do that?"

"Only as far as Yui is concerned," Ren answered. "It looks like Philip is from another time, years after mine. Whether it means we won or Kanzaki did is hard to tell. Either way, the battle he set up is over, and Philip fights crimes related to those Gaia Memories he uses to transform."

To be perfectly honest, that was one of those things Ren was willing to chalk up to "Philip is weird like that," but the whole point of this conversation was to try to understand each other better. "I don't know. It's some kind of power of his. He does his look-ups through something called the Gaia Library. Maybe it has something to do with his Rider powers, but I don't know for sure."

Even more to take in, and she wasn't entirely sure she understood. BUt part of it, and enough of it, she could. "Outside of all the timelines you deal and dealt with, talk about people's personal timelines being confusing." She knew the reason given by the Daligig, based on being pulled from where they could be pulled.

She shivered, shoving images of screaming whiteness engulfing everything. "Something I'd be better off asking him about directly, hmm?" She looked down at her tea, thinking. "You died in one of the reset timelines. I'm glad it's not where you got left, when the clock's time redistributed. Though I should warn you," she said with a sigh, "The dragon I spoke with mentioned time wasn't given back equally. I don't know how that works when you take into account how we were supposedly brought here, but as long as things seem mostly on mark, you should be fine."

A bit of a tangent, but it was more explanation than she'd been able to give before.

Ren nodded with a sigh. His timelines were a mess, to put it mildly, and as reassuring as it was to know there was going to be a future for Philip to come from--something beyond these constant time loops--it added even more questions sometimes.

"Probably," he answered. "I didn't ask him much about his past. I thought if he wanted to share, he would." It was the way he'd wanted things regarding his past, but in retrospect, it was a really bad idea.

"I wouldn't know if anything was taken or added," he admitted at last. "I know how close it was with that timeline, and I suppose I'm lucky that all I have to worry about are the extra memories."

"I think a lot of us believed that," Sakura said, in response to his statement on sharing. "It's not as appealing in practice now as it used to be."

Which made her breathe in, prepared to offer her own version of a quid pro quo. "Was there anything you wanted to know about me?"

That was the question, wasn't it? By nature, Ren didn't try to learn too much about people. He was too used to needing to keep his distance. But if there was a way to prevent anything else like what had happened to him, now was the time to ask.

"Whatever you think is important," he said. "I've seen you fight, and heal. Is there anything related to that you think I should know?"

Sakura leaned back, wondering what exactly would be important for Ren to know. "Limitations, to an extent. I can't exactly heal the common cold, if I can help a system bolster to get through it more quickly. I know a lot of herbal medicine along with what people here consider to be more traditional medical practices. I'm a trained medical shinobi, from a village called Konoha in the Land of Fire."

It was all generalities, things that might matter, and those that didn't. Outside of personal identity. "I'm trained to and used to fighting in groups. I don't know anything about guns outside of what I've picked up while here. Most of what I know is hand-to-hand combat, or weapons training with things like shuriken, kunai, tanto, some with katana. Any samurai would laugh at the idea, and it's true, we're not as well trained as they are when it comes to sword kata."

It was helpful, in case they ever needed to depend on her in a fight. But Ren had to get out of that mindset--it wasn't just a matter of the battle; he'd already seen how he needed more than that just to keep him sane.

"Anything else?" he asked. "What about something personal you think I should know?"

Something personal? Sakura hesitated, then straightened. "I'm not sure how much of it'll be relevant. If anyone shows up, that is... there's not a lot that comes immediately to mind." She offered him a small smile. "My story's a lot simpler, but..."

There were hard calls to make. "I'm very good at what I do. I have to be. It's just, when it comes to Naruto and Sasuke-kun, I'm not always as... focused as I should be. They matter too much to me." She fiddled with her tea, not entirely comfortable to be admitting what she'd slowly needed to, thinking about her boys. "Remind me of that if they do wake up, would you?"

That Ren could sympathize with easily. After all, his entire fight had been a conflict between who he had to care about and who he'd have to sacrifice.

"No problem," he promised.

"Thank you." She didn't know what else to say. Hopefully that would be enough.

"For the tea, too. It's always been nice."

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Things I need to start understanding [closed]

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