Two Years Later And A Year After The Second Movie
INT. HUKITASKE PHARMACY — LATE AFTERNOON
Autumn had returned to Tokyo like a letter addressed to memory.
The pharmacy stood on a quiet corner where two residential streets intersected with the kind of geometric precision that characterized Japanese urban planning. Its storefront glass reflected the changing sky—clouds moving with that particular autumn velocity, fast enough to notice but slow enough to track, painting shadows that raced across the sidewalk like children playing tag with light itself.
Inside, the air held that distinctive pharmaceutical scent—antiseptic and herbal, the olfactory intersection of Western medicine and Eastern tradition. Shelves lined the walls in neat rows, each bottle and box arranged with the precision of someone who understood that organization wasn't just aesthetic but moral. That chaos in small things led to chaos in large things. That a misplaced medication could mean the difference between healing and harm.
AKIO HUKITASKE stood behind the counter, his white pharmacist's coat crisp despite the late hour, his turquoise hair—that impossible shade that marked him as different—pulled back in its usual tie. Two years had passed since Yaka's destruction, but time had left its marks in subtle ways. The shadows under his eyes had deepened. The lines around his mouth had become more pronounced. He looked like someone who'd stopped sleeping properly and had learned to function anyway through sheer pharmacological knowledge and stubborn will.
His hands moved with practiced efficiency, counting pills into orange prescription bottles. Thirty tablets. Twice daily. Take with food. The rhythm of it was meditative—the click of pills against plastic, the scratch of pen on label, the soft rustle of paper bags. Simple tasks that required just enough attention to quiet the mind without demanding enough to exhaust it.
Through the window, he could see Tokyo's evening transformation beginning. Salary workers hurrying toward train stations. Students lingering outside convenience stores. The city's shift change—day people going home, night people emerging, the eternal circulation that never stopped no matter how many tragedies occurred in its shadows.
His phone sat on the counter beside the register, its screen dark. He'd been staring at it intermittently for the past hour, waiting for a call that logic said wouldn't come but hope insisted might.
Yakahura hadn't contacted him since that day in the ruins.
Years and months of silence from a detective who'd watched his grandson walk away into smoke and ash, who'd knelt in the gray powder of Yaka's destruction and looked like a person watching his own execution in slow motion.
Akio wondered if he should reach out. Wondered if interference would help or harm. Wondered if there was even a meaningful difference between the two anymore.
The bell above the door chimed—that small brass sound that announced arrival and departure with equal indifference.
HIKATA YAKASUKE entered like a force of nature contained in human form, his presence immediately filling the small space with energy that felt almost aggressive in its cheerfulness. He wore a Hawaiian shirt featuring a pattern of surfboards and palm trees despite it being autumn in Tokyo, paired with sneakers that somehow managed to squeak against the tile floor despite the absence of moisture.
HIKATA:(Grinning with that performer's smile that never quite reached his eyes) "Doc! You look like you've been sleeping in a coffin. Which is ironic, considering you're supposed to be the one keeping people alive."*
Despite everything, Akio felt his mouth twitch toward something that might have been a smile in better lighting.
AKIO:"Good to see you too, Hikata."
HIKATA:(Leaning against the counter with exaggerated casualness) "So, I was thinking—and I know, dangerous precedent—but hear me out. When was the last time you took a vacation? And before you say '1 year ago when we almost died,' let me specify: a vacation where we don't almost die."*
AKIO:"Is that even possible at this point?"
HIKATA:"Exactly my concern! Which is why I'm preemptively planning something aggressively normal. Beach. Hotel. Overpriced drinks with tiny umbrellas. The kind of vacation that appears in cafes and makes people think 'yes, this is what happiness looks like.'"
He pulled out his phone, swiping through what appeared to be hotel websites with the enthusiasm of someone who'd spent considerable time researching this pitch.
HIKATA:"Look at this place! The Grand Line Hotel and Resort. Five stars. Beachfront. They have an amusement park attached. It's so aggressively wholesome it makes my teeth hurt."
Akio took the phone, examining the images. Glass and gold. Ferris wheels reflected in calm water. Fireworks over the bay. It looked like the kind of place that appeared in dreams or advertisements—too perfect to be real, beauty that felt vaguely threatening in its insistence.
AKIO:"Where is this?"
HIKATA:"About three hours south. Built on reclaimed land along the coast. Apparently it just opened last year. They're doing some promotional thing—heavily discounted rates for medical professionals. I figured that's basically you."
Something in Akio's heart tightened. That ancestral warning system that had kept him alive through too many close calls.
AKIO:"Reclaimed land. What was there before?"
HIKATA:(Shrugging with practiced indifference) "I don't know, probably fish? Doc, not everything is a conspiracy. Sometimes a hotel is just a hotel."*
But Akio's instincts said otherwise. Said that nothing was ever just anything. That every building stood on the graves of what came before, and some graves were deeper than others.
Before he could articulate his concern, the bell chimed again.
RUMANE entered with her characteristic economy of movement—no wasted energy, no unnecessary flourish. Everything about her suggested military precision translated into civilian life. Dark jacket. Darker expression. Eyes that calculated threat assessment as automatically as breathing.
RUMANE:"We need to talk. Privately."
The way she said it—clipped, urgent—made Hikata's smile falter.
The Back Room
INT. HUKITASKE PHARMACY — STORAGE ROOM — CONTINUOUS
The storage room was small and windowless, lit by a single fluorescent tube that hummed with that particular frequency that lived just at the edge of hearing, creating low-level anxiety through pure vibration. Shelves lined the walls, filled with bulk medication and supplies arranged in the same obsessive order as the front.
Rumane closed the door behind them with deliberate care, the click of the latch somehow sounding final.
RUMANE:"I've been monitoring police channels. Yakahura Mizuhashi has been conducting unauthorized investigations."
AKIO:"Into Yaka's remnants?"
RUMANE:(Nodding) "And into you. He's been tracking your movements, cross-referencing your location with survivor appearances. He thinks you're hiding something."*
HIKATA:"Are we hiding something?"
AKIO:"We're always hiding something."
Rumane pulled out her tablet, swiping through what appeared to be surveillance photos—grainy images taken from distance, showing Akio leaving the pharmacy, treating patients, living his life under observation.
RUMANE:"There's more. I've identified at least three Yaka survivors who've gone missing in the past month. Not dead—missing. No bodies. No evidence. Just... gone."
AKIO:"Taken?"
RUMANE:"Or recruited. The pattern suggests organization. Purpose. Someone is gathering them. Its seems Yaka I guess hasn't learn their lesson. But I don't know that for sure."
The fluorescent light flickered, casting momentary darkness before returning. In that brief absence of illumination, Akio felt the weight of something he'd been trying to ignore for three months—the certainty that Yaka's destruction had been a battle won, not a war ended.
HIKATA:(His usual levity completely abandoned) "So what do we do? We can't exactly hunt down every Yaka survivor. We don't even know how many there were."*
RUMANE:"Seventeen confirmed, based on facility records. But those are just the ones who survived the initial destruction. There could be others—off-site facilities, satellite operations we didn't know about."
AKIO:(Quiet, thinking) "Kazuki. Yakahura's grandson. Have you found any trace of him?"*
RUMANE:(Shaking her head) "Nothing. He vanished completely after the ruins. No surveillance catches. No credit card usage. No digital footprint. Either he's dead—"*
AKIO:"—or someone is hiding him very well."
Silence settled between them, heavy with implications.
HIKATA:(After a long moment) "This is exactly why we need a vacation. Because this—"* (He gestured at the room, at them, at the conversation) "—this is killing us slowly. We can't spend the rest of our lives waiting for the next crisis."
AKIO:"Can't we?"
HIKATA:"Doc. Please. One weekend. Seventy-two hours where we pretend to be normal people doing normal things. Is that really too much to ask?"
Akio looked at his two closest friends—Hikata with his desperate optimism, Rumane with her tactical pessimism—and realized that they were both right simultaneously. They needed rest. And rest was probably impossible. But maybe the attempt mattered more than the success.
AKIO:"Fine. One weekend. But we bring the Murakaze blades."
HIKATA:(Grinning, relief evident) "I wouldn't have it any other way."*
The Mail
INT. HUKITASKE PHARMACY — FRONT COUNTER — LATER THAT EVENING
After Hikata and Rumane left, Akio remained at the counter, finishing the day's prescriptions. The work was mechanical now—his hands knew the movements without conscious direction, allowing his mind to wander.
He thought about Kazuki. About that moment in the ruins when the kid—no, the young teenager—had looked at his grandfather with eyes that glowed orange and empty. About the specific way his voice had sounded when delivering that verdict: "You failed me."
Akio understood that tone. Had heard it in his own voice, in his own past, directed at different failures. The sound of trust breaking so completely that it transformed into something else. Not hatred—hatred would have required caring. This was absence. The emotional equivalent of amputation.
The mail slot rattled.
Akio looked up, startled. It was nearly 8 PM—well past normal delivery times. Through the glass door, he could see no mail carrier, no vehicle, nothing except the empty street and the gathering darkness.
An envelope lay on the floor, half-visible beneath the slot.
He approached it slowly, that warning system in his heart activating again. The envelope was smooth-colored, expensive-looking, with his name written in calligraphy that suggested either great care or professional printing designed to mimic care.
Dr. Akio Hukitaske
Hukitaske Pharmacy
Tokyo
No return address. No postage. Hand-delivered. He opened it with the careful precision of someone who'd learned that seemingly harmless things could contain harm.
Inside, a single card on heavy stock:
THE GRAND LINE HOTEL & RESORT
cordially invites
Dr. Akio Hukitaske
to experience our grand opening celebration
November 15-18
Complimentary accommodations for you and two guests
Full access to resort facilities and Grand Line Amusement Park
We've heard of your expertise and would value your consultation
on a matter of pharmaceutical importance.
A car will collect you November 15th at 6 PM.
The card felt wrong in his hands. Not physically—it was just paper and ink—but conceptually. The timing. The specificity. The coincidence of Hikata mentioning this same hotel hours before an invitation arrived through unconventional delivery.
Akio turned the card over. On the back, written in the same elegant calligraphy:
"The ghosts you thought you burned are waiting."
His blood went cold.
The Blades
INT. AKIO'S APARTMENT — NIGHT
Akio's apartment sat above the pharmacy—a small space that felt more like an extension of his workspace than a home. Minimal furniture. Books stacked in precise columns. Medical journals on every surface. The living space of someone who'd forgotten—or never learned—how to separate work from life.
The Murakaze Twin Blades rested in their lacquered case on his desk, the only object in the apartment that suggested history rather than function. Black wood polished to mirror-shine. Brass clasps shaped like coiled serpents. Inside, cradled in midnight silk: the Emerald Healer and the Black Poisoner.
Akio opened the case slowly, ritual-like. The blades seemed to emanate their own light—the Healer with its subtle green tinge that spoke of growth and medicine, the Poisoner with its dark edge that seemed to devour illumination, hungry and patient.
His fingers traced the Healer's edge without touching, following the curve of steel that had saved countless lives through precise surgery and pharmaceutical preparation. Then the Poisoner—the blade that had ended just as many, that understood the thin line between cure and killing, that knew sometimes the only medicine was death itself.
AKIO:(Whispering to steel that couldn't hear him) "I said you wouldn't have to wake again. I lied."*
His phone buzzed. Text message. Unknown number.
"Tomorrow, Detective Mizuhashi will contact you. He's been searching for his grandson. You'll want to help him. Don't."
Akio stared at the screen, reading and rereading those three sentences. The presumption of knowledge. The warning delivered as fact. The implicit threat in the word "Don't."
He typed a response: "Who is this?"
The reply came immediately:
"Someone who understands what you destroyed. And what you created. The Grand Line Hotel awaits, Doctor. Bring your blades. You'll need them. And whatever you do—"
A pause. Three dots indicating typing. Then:
"Don't remove your wristband once they give it to you. It will detonate."
The message ended there. When Akio tried to respond again, the number showed as disconnected.
He sat in the darkness of his apartment, holding his phone, feeling the weight of another trap closing around him. The invitation. The warning. The certainty that going to the Grand Line Hotel was both necessary and catastrophic.
Outside his window, Tokyo continued its breathing. Eight million lives compressed into impossible proximity, each one believing themselves the center of their own narrative while existing as background in millions of others. Lights stretched to the horizon—a constellation of human habitation defying the darkness through sheer collective stubbornness.
Somewhere in that sprawl, Kazuki walked with orange eyes and accumulated rage. Somewhere, Yakahura searched with the desperation of someone trying to prevent a tragedy that had already occurred.
Somewhere, something waited at the Grand Line Hotel—something that had survived Yaka's destruction and learned patience. Akio closed the blade case, the locks clicking shut with finality.
He would go. Because not going meant staying ignorant. Because the victims of Yaka's experiments deserved whatever help he could provide. Because somewhere in the ruins of what he'd destroyed, something was growing that needed to be stopped before it bloomed.
And because—though he wouldn't admit it even to himself—he needed to know if Kazuki could be saved, or if some transformations were too complete to reverse.
The city lights reflected in his window, painting his silhouette against the glass. He looked like a ghost haunting his own life, transparent and temporary, already halfway to disappearing.
Tomorrow would bring Detective Mizuhashi. In three days, the Grand Line Hotel.
And after that—well, after that was the part that fear lived in. The part where plans met reality and discovered they weren't compatible. The part where good intentions revealed themselves as paving materials for roads that led places no one wanted to go.
Akio turned off the lights and sat in darkness, listening to Tokyo's eternal symphony. Waiting for tomorrow. Dreading it. Unable to stop its arrival no matter how tightly he closed his eyes.
The Detective's Call
INT. HUKITASKE PHARMACY — MORNING
Morning arrived wrapped in fog that transformed Tokyo into something from a soft film—soft-edged, dreamlike, beautiful in that way that suggested transience. The kind of weather that made you believe in ghost stories and unlikely meetings.
Akio had been at the pharmacy since 5 AM, unable to sleep, filling the insomnia hours with inventory and organization. Work as meditation. Task as escape.
The bell chimed at exactly 7:30 AM.
YAKAHURA MIZUHASHI stood in the doorway like a figure from fiction—trench coat despite the season, face showing three months of aging that should have taken years. The scar along his jawline was more pronounced now, or maybe it just seemed that way because everything else about him had diminished. Weight loss. Hair grayer. Eyes carrying the specific exhaustion that comes not from lack of sleep but from too much consciousness, too much awareness, too much feeling when numbness would be merciful.
YAKAHURA:"Dr. Hukitaske. May I have a moment of your time?"
His voice was formal. Professional. The voice of someone conducting an interview rather than seeking help. The voice of someone who'd learned that vulnerability was a luxury he couldn't afford.
AKIO:"Of course. Come in."
They sat in the pharmacy's small consultation room—a space designed for privacy when discussing sensitive medical matters. Two chairs. A desk. A window looking out at the fog-shrouded street. Everything neutral, designed to facilitate difficult conversations.
Yakahura pulled out a folder—the kind of well-worn manila that suggested months of handling, of opening and closing and opening again. Inside, photographs. Documents. The accumulated evidence of obsessive investigation.
YAKAHURA:"I'll be direct. I'm investigating Yaka Laboratory's remnants. Seventeen survivors have been identified. Three are missing. I believe they're being gathered by someone—recruited or taken, I'm not certain which."
AKIO:"And you think I know something about this?"
YAKAHURA:"I think you're the one who destroyed Yaka. Which makes you either part of the solution or part of the problem. I'm trying to determine which."
The accusation was delivered without anger. Just fact-finding. The clinical detachment of someone who'd learned to separate emotion from investigation because mixing them led to mistakes.
AKIO:"I destroyed Yaka to stop the Scarlet Helix. To prevent more victims. Your grandson was one of those victims. And are you dumb, because I'm famous because of this issue. And It's a pain, but I'm fine with it now."
At the mention of Kazuki, something in Yakahura's expression cracked—just momentarily, just enough to show the devastation underneath before professional composure resealed it.
YAKAHURA:"My grandson. Yes." (A pause, heavy with everything unsaid) "Have you seen him? Since that day in the ruins?"
AKIO:"No. I'm sorry."
YAKAHURA:"Don't be. Sorry doesn't change anything." (He pulled out another photo—Kazuki at fifteen, eyes glowing orange, Galaxy Blade manifested, beautiful and terrible) "He said I failed him. He's right. I did. But failure doesn't absolve me of responsibility. It multiplies it."
AKIO:"What are you asking me?"
YAKAHURA:(Meeting his eyes directly) "If you find him—when you find him, because I know you will—don't try to fix him. He's not broken. He's evolved. Transformed. He's become exactly what Yaka designed him to be."*
AKIO:"And what's that?"
YAKAHURA:"A weapon that thinks it's still human. The most dangerous kind."
The words hung between them like a diagnosis neither wanted to acknowledge but both knew was accurate.
YAKAHURA:(Standing, preparing to leave) "I'm telling you this because I've spent three months learning everything about you, Dr. Hukitaske. You're a healer. You see problems and want to fix them. But some things can't be fixed. Some things can only be contained or destroyed. And if the time comes when you have to choose—"*
He stopped, unable or unwilling to complete the thought.
AKIO:"If you're asking me to kill your grandson—"
YAKAHURA:"I'm asking you to save him. Even if saving him looks like ending him. Even if the only mercy left is the mercy of quick death rather than slow corruption. Like what he's experiencing from Yaka now."
The detective left without waiting for response, the bell chiming his departure.
Akio sat alone in the consultation room, staring at the fog beyond the window, feeling the weight of another impossible choice being loaded onto shoulders already carrying too much.
His phone buzzed.
Text from Hikata: "Car arrives tomorrow 6 PM. Grand Line Hotel. I already packed your bag. Yes, I included the swords. No, you can't back out now. See you tomorrow, Doc."
Akio closed his eyes. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. The day when consequences arrived to collect debts we thought we'd already paid.
FADE TO BLACK...
[NEXT EPISODE: "The Wristbands" — The journey to Grand Line Hotel. The fireworks spelling warnings in the sky. The moment the trap closes and paradise becomes prison.]