The sterile white of Tokyo Medical Center, 2228, shattered at 0623 hours.
Sekitanki's eyes opened not to gentle recovery, but to the sharp click of boots on polished floor. Two days. He'd been unconscious for only two days since the facility collapse, since carrying Kaito through impossible destruction, since arriving in a future that felt less like home and more like another prison.
Three figures stood at the foot of his medical bed, wearing uniforms that screamed authority: dark suits with holographic badges that identified them as TRA Legal Division. Their expressions carried the careful neutrality of people delivering news they knew would destroy someone.
"Sekitanki Hankō suru hito." The lead attorney's voice was clinical, precise. "You are hereby under arrest for violation of the Temporal Displacement Act of 2089, unauthorized timeline crossing, potential causality violations, and—"
"I don't care." Sekitanki's voice emerged rough from disuse. "Where's Kaito? Where's my friend?"
The attorneys exchanged glances. Something passed between them—pity, maybe, or the uncomfortable weight of delivering multiple catastrophes simultaneously.
"Tanaka Kaito is in critical condition. Section 9-C, medical isolation. His temporal displacement trauma has entered terminal phase. The doctors estimate—" The attorney paused, consulting a holographic display. "—approximately six to eight hours remaining."
The words hit like bullets. Clean. Surgical. Devastating. "No. You said he was stable. You said recovery was—"
"Unfortunately your wrong, his injuries are to severe. He will... die soon." The attorney's expression softened fractionally. "We're sorry. There's nothing our medical technology can do for causality violations."
Sekitanki tried to sit up. Medical sensors screamed protest. His reconstructed spine sent pain lancing through his torso—two days wasn't enough recovery for someone of his thinking.
"I need to see him. Now."
"That can be arranged. As a violation to such a criminal, we're authorizing supervised visitation before formal custody begins. As you watch your puny friend die." The lead attorney gestured to the guards flanking the door. "But you'll be monitored. Any attempt to flee will be met with immediate force. Do you understand?"
"I understand my friend is dying and you're treating it like a legal procedure."
"Everything is a legal procedure in 2228, Mr. Sekitanki. That's how we prevented another Causality War." The attorney's voice carried the weight of someone explaining necessary evil. "You have two hours with Tanaka-san. Use them well."
They escorted him through corridors that felt simultaneously familiar and alien—Tokyo architecture, but filtered through centuries of advancement he couldn't comprehend. Holographic displays advertised neural implants.
This is Kaito's era. The future he tried to reach. And it can't save him.
The guards flanking Sekitanki moved with military precision, hands resting on weapons that probably didn't even fire bullets. He catalogued escape routes automatically—Carboniferous survival instinct operating on autopilot—but dismissed them.
Not yet. Not until I see him. Not until I say goodbye.
Section 9-C appeared through smart-glass doors that read biometric signatures and judged whether entry was permitted. The guards stopped at the threshold, creating a perimeter that suggested this was where compassion ended and custody began.
"Two hours," one guard said. His voice carried no malice, just the flat efficiency of someone following protocols. "We'll be right outside. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
Sekitanki entered alone.
The room beyond was suffused with soft blue light—medical technology monitoring everything, displaying vital signs on holographic screens that painted Kaito's failing body in numbers and graphs. And in the center, surrounded by equipment that couldn't save him:
Kaito. His friend. The person who'd understood displacement because he'd lived it too. But wrong. Everything about him wrong.
His skin had taken on a gray pallor that reminded Sekitanki of corpses in 1945—the color of people whose bodies had already started the process of returning to nothing. His breathing was shallow, mechanical, maintained by equipment rather than will. And his eyes—
His eyes were open but clouded completely white. Blind. Temporal displacement had destroyed his optic nerves, stolen his ability to see the world he'd tried so desperately to reach.
"Kaito." Sekitanki's voice broke on the name. "I'm here. Can you hear me?" A slight movement. Kaito's head turned toward the sound, unseeing eyes tracking toward voice rather than vision.
"Sekitanki?" The word emerged as barely a whisper. "Is that... I can't see. I can't see anything anymore. Everything's just white noise and darkness." Sekitanki moved to the bedside, gripped Kaito's hand. Felt how cold it was. How fragile. Like holding paper that would tear if he squeezed too hard.
"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
"You're lying. They're arresting you. I heard the lawyers." A weak smile crossed Kaito's face—heartbreaking in its attempt at humor despite terminal diagnosis. "Always trying to make me feel better. Even when there's no point."
"There's always a point. We survived 1945 together. Survived the impossible. We're not giving up now."
"I'm not giving up. I'm dying. There's a difference." Kaito's blind eyes tracked ceiling-ward, seeing nothing but probably imagining the artificial Milky Way Tokyo displayed at night. "Temporal paradox cascade. My body remembers being from 2228, but it also remembers being displaced to 1945. The quantum states are tearing me apart at the cellular level."
"They can fix it. This era has technology that—"
"Can't fix causality violations. The doctors explained it while you were unconscious. Curing displacement trauma requires temporal stabilization technology that's been banned since the Causality Wars. They could save me, but it would risk creating paradoxes that might destroy entire timelines." His grip tightened weakly. "Better one person dies than risk billions across history."
The clinical logic was perfect. The human cost was unbearable. "That's not fair. You survived hell. You earned life. They can't just—"
"They can. They did. And honestly?" Kaito coughed—wet, painful sound that the monitors registered as respiratory distress. "I'm okay with it. Because I got something I never expected."
"What?"
"Friendship. Real friendship. Three months of knowing I wasn't alone in being displaced. That someone understood what it felt like to be lost across time." Tears leaked from his blind eyes. "I failed my grandmother. Failed to save her. Failed at everything I set out to do. But I didn't fail at being your friend. That's enough. It has to be enough."
The door opened behind them. Sekitanki turned, expecting guards, finding someone else entirely:
An elderly grandma, maybe ninety-three, ninety-four, moving with the careful precision of someone whose body was failing but whose will remained absolute. She wore traditional clothing—kimono in deep blue—and her face held the kind of grief that came from losing everything and finding the strength to continue anyway.
Tanaka Hisako. Kaito's grandmother. The person he'd violated causality itself to try to save.
"Kaito?" Her voice broke with emotion held too long. "They said... they said you came back. That you'd been found. I thought you were dead. I thought—"
"Grandmother." Kaito's blind eyes tracked toward her voice. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I tried to save you. Tried to find a cure for the NDS. I built a time machine and jumped forward fifty years and everything went wrong and—"
He couldn't finish. The confession dissolved into sobbing—the kind that came from someone who'd carried guilt across eras and finally found the person they'd failed.
Hisako rushed to the bedside, opposite Sekitanki, her hands finding Kaito's face with the gentle touch of someone who'd raised him, loved him, forgiven him before the apology fully formed.
"You foolish child. You brilliant, foolish kid." She was crying now, years of grief and confusion and desperate hope pouring out. "You disappeared. Three months ago, you vanished without explanation. I thought you'd abandoned me. Thought I'd done something wrong. Thought—"
"Never. I never abandoned you. I was just lost. Lost in 1945, fighting World War II, trying desperately to get back and save you from the NDS and—" Kaito's voice broke completely. "And I failed. I failed everything. The machine malfunctioned. I couldn't bring back the cure. I'm dying and I never saved you and—"
"You didn't fail." Hisako's voice was fierce despite the tears. "You survived. You came back to me. Even if it's just to say goodbye. That's not failure. That's love made tangible."
Sekitanki stepped back, giving them space, feeling like an intruder on something sacred. He moved to the room's far corner, becoming shadow, becoming witness to a goodbye he had no right to interrupt.
But he couldn't look away. Couldn't grant them privacy when privacy meant not honoring the weight of this moment.
Kaito and Hisako talked in whispers—words Sekitanki couldn't fully hear but understood anyway. Apologies. Forgiveness. I love yous that spanned the gulf between intention and outcome. The monitors tracking Kaito's vitals showed steady decline—each minute bringing him closer to the ending they both knew was inevitable.
"I can't see your face," Kaito said at one point. "The displacement destroyed my optic nerves. I can hear you. Feel your hands. But I can't see you one last time. Can't—"
"Then I'll describe it," Hisako interrupted, her voice gentle despite the tears. "I have new wrinkles. More than when you left. Gray hair that's almost white now. But my eyes—I like to think they're still kind. Still the eyes that watched you grow up. Still the eyes that see you as the grandson who tried to save his foolish grandmother."
"You're not foolish. You're the wisest person I ever knew."
"Wisdom couldn't cure the NDS. But it taught me that some things matter more than living. Like knowing you tried. Like having these final moments instead of wondering forever where you'd gone."
Time passed. The monitors showed continuing decline. Kaito's breathing became more halted. His grip on Hisako's hand weakened. The blue light in the room seemed to dim, or maybe that was just Sekitanki's perception coloring reality with the weight of impending loss.
"Grandmother?" Kaito's voice emerged barely audible. "I'm scared. I'm really scared. I don't want to stop existing."
"I know, sweetheart. I know." Hisako leaned close, forehead touching his. "But you're not stopping. You're just changing. Becoming something we can't see yet. And wherever you go, whatever comes next, you carry my love with you. Always."
"Promise you'll be okay? Promise you'll live? For both of us?"
"I promise. I'll live long enough to tell everyone about my brilliant grandson who loved me enough to violate time itself. Who survived impossible displacement just to say goodbye."
Kaito smiled—genuine despite the pain, despite the fear. "That's all I wanted. Just to say goodbye properly this time."
His breathing changed. The monitors' alarms began their terminal song—the one that meant medicine had done everything it could and biology was reclaiming what it was owed. Medical staff rushed in, surrounding the bed, working with desperate efficiency to delay the inevitable.
Hisako held his hand through it all. Sekitanki watched from the corner, tears streaming down his face, as his friend—the person who'd understood displacement, who'd survived hell beside him, who'd taught him that friendship mattered more than achievement—slipped away.
The monitors flatlined at 0847 hours. The medical staff stepped back. Hisako's scream was beyond language—primal grief that transcended words, the sound of someone watching their world end while still breathing.
She collapsed across Kaito's body, sobbing with such intensity that the guards outside looked away, unwilling to witness something so raw, so completely human in an era that had tried to engineer humanity into something more controllable.
Sekitanki stood frozen in his corner, watching, unable to help, unable to fix this. All his survival skills, all his accumulated knowledge from four eras, and he couldn't do anything except bear witness.
Everyone I touch dies. Carboniferous—I survived by killing. Kamakura—I left them behind. 1945—four volunteers gave everything. And now Kaito. My friend. The only person in 2228 who understood me.
What's the point? What's the fucking point of surviving if everyone around me ends?
Time became meaningless. Hisako's grief filled the room, the hallway, probably the entire medical center. Eventually—maybe hours later, maybe just minutes—the medical staff gently pulled her away from the body.
She turned, saw Sekitanki still standing in his corner, and something in her grief-stricken expression shifted to recognition. "You're the friend. The one Kaito talked about, over the last 2 days you were asleep." Her voice was destroyed by screaming but still coherent. "Sekitanki, right? The time traveler from 2024?"
"Yes."
She approached him with shuffling steps, pulled a white chrysanthemum from her kimono—the traditional flower for funerals, for honoring the dead. Pressed it into his hands with both of hers.
"Thank you. For being his friend. For making sure he wasn't alone during those impossible three months. For carrying him to safety when the facility collapsed." Fresh tears fell. "I'm grateful you existed. That he had someone who understood when I couldn't."
The flower felt impossibly light in Sekitanki's hands. Fragile. Like everything good in this universe.
"He was my friend. The first real friend I'd had in years. He taught me that survival matters more when shared." Sekitanki's voice broke. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him. Sorry that all my survival skills, all my knowledge, couldn't fix causality violation. I'm so sorry—"
Hisako hugged him suddenly, fiercely, with the strength of someone who'd lost everything and chose connection anyway.
"Don't apologize for surviving. He'd hate that. He'd want you to live. To make his sacrifice mean something." She pulled back, hands gripping his shoulders. "Promise me you'll keep fighting. That you'll help other displaced people. That Kaito's death creates ripples that save others."
"I promise."
"Good. That's good." She stepped back, composed herself with visible effort. "I need to arrange the funeral. Traditional Buddhist service. He'd want that. You're welcome to attend if—if they allow it."
"They won't. I'm under arrest. They'll take me into custody as soon as I leave this room."
Understanding crossed her face. "Then take this moment. Honor him in whatever way you can. And know that his grandmother is grateful you existed, even if existence brought pain."
She left, escorted by medical staff who'd probably guide her through the bureaucracy of death that even 2228 hadn't eliminated. The door closed behind her.
Sekitanki stood alone with Kaito's body. The monitors had been silenced. The medical equipment deactivated. Just a shell that used to contain someone brilliant and kind and brave enough to violate time itself for destiny.
He placed the chrysanthemum on Kaito's stomach. Bowed—formal Japanese gesture that transcended eras. Whispered words only the dead could hear:
"Thank you for being my friend. For understanding. For teaching me that emptiness could be filled with connection. I'll keep our promises. I'll help displaced people. I'll make your death mean something."
No response. Just silence that felt heavier than any sound. The door opened. Guards entered, expressions neutral but not cruel. "Time's up," the lead guard said. "We need to take you into custody now. Please don't resist. We'd prefer this stays peaceful."
Sekitanki looked at the window—eighth floor, reinforced smart-glass, seventy-meter drop to ground level. His Carboniferous reflexes were already calculating trajectories. His Kamakura training was mapping the descent. His WWII skills were identifying how to use his hospital clothes as improvised rope.
I could fight. Could run. Could escape into Tokyo's shadows and disappear.
But his body was screaming exhaustion. Two days of recovery wasn't enough. The fall from wars had shattered bones that medical nanotech was still repairing. He was operating at maybe thirty percent capacity.
But Kaito died because they wouldn't use the technology that could save him. Because preventing temporal violations mattered more than human life. I'm not letting them contain me. Not letting them turn me into another cautionary tale about why time travel should stay banned.
"I'm sorry," Sekitanki said. Then he moved. The guards were fast—2228 training, enhanced reflexes, weapons that should have stunned him before he covered three meters.
But they'd never fought someone who'd survived four eras. Who'd learned combat from prehistoric monsters and medieval samurai and World War II desperation. Who'd spent years becoming something harder than soft.
Sekitanki ducked the first stun blast, felt it superheat the air where his head had been. Closed the distance to the window in a sprint that ignored his body's protests. His shoulder hit the smart-glass with all his accumulated mass.
The window cracked. Fractured. Shattered outward in a cascade of safety glass that rained toward street level seventy meters below. He didn't hesitate. Didn't think. Just leaped.
The fall was pure physics—acceleration at 9.8 meters per second, modified by air resistance and the desperation of someone who'd decided dying was preferable to custody.
His Carboniferous reflexes kicked in. Read the descent. Identified surfaces that could slow momentum without killing him outright. That ledge—three seconds of freefall then grab it, use it to pivot trajectory.
He caught the ledge, felt his shoulder dislocate from the impact, used the momentum to swing toward the building's decorative outcropping. His Kamakura training guided the motion—flowing like water around obstacles, redirecting force rather than absorbing it.
The hospital clothes tore a bit. He ripped a section free during a brief contact with ventilation shaft, tied it around the next architectural feature with hands that moved faster than conscious thought. His WWII squad had taught him knots that held under impossible stress.
The improvised rope arrested his fall for two seconds—enough to reduce velocity from lethal to merely catastrophic. It snapped. He fell again.
Ground approached with mathematical certainty. No more ledges. No more architectural features. Just concrete and the question of whether his spine could survive impact at terminal velocity.
Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten. He twisted mid-air, positioned his feet to absorb primary impact, prayed that medical nanotech had repaired enough structural damage to prevent complete skeletal failure.
Five meters. Impact.
His legs shattered. The augmented spine held but sent pain so intense his vision whited out. He collapsed forward, hands hitting concrete, momentum carrying him into a roll that distributed force across his entire body.
When motion finally stopped, he was lying face-down on a street that smelled of ozone and hover-vehicle exhaust. Blood pooled beneath him—from the cuts where glass had found flesh, from compound fractures in both legs, from the general trauma of falling eight stories through sheer stubborn refusal to die.
I'm alive. Impossibly. Stupidly. Alive.
He tried to move. His legs didn't respond—shattered beyond immediate function. His arms worked, barely. He dragged himself forward on his elbows, leaving a blood trail, getting maybe ten meters before his strength gave out completely.
Then he started screaming.
Not from pain. From everything. From months of displacement and loss and watching people die because he'd been too weak or too stupid or too focused on survival to save them. From Kaito's blind eyes and Hisako's grief and four volunteers in 1945 and Yuki and Takeda and everyone across four eras who'd helped him survive when he didn't deserve it.
He punched the concrete with his fists. Again. Again. Again. Each impact breaking bones that were already broken, painting the street with blood that mixed with tears, screaming until his voice gave out and only hoarse gasping remained.
Why? Why do I keep surviving when everyone else dies? What's the point? What's the fucking point?
No answer came. Just the indifferent city continuing around him—hover-vehicles passing, pedestrians giving him wide confused faces forward, Tokyo 2228 demonstrating that even breakdowns were spectacles to be avoided rather than helped.
Time passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. Eventually, the screaming stopped. The punching stopped. Only the crying remained—quiet, exhausted tears that fell onto concrete already stained with his blood.
He dragged himself into an alley. Found dark shadow. Found a corner where buildings formed a barrier between him and the street. Collapsed there, shaking, broken in ways that went beyond physical damage.
Kaito's dead. The volunteers are dead. Yuki and Takeda are seven hundred years dust. My parents died hoping I'd come home. Everyone's gone and I'm still here and I don't know why.
His medical nanobots were already working—repairing the leg fractures, sealing the cuts, preventing him from bleeding out. In a few hours, maybe a day, he'd be functional again. Because that's what he did. He survived. Always survived. Even when he didn't want to.
Night fell. Tokyo's artificial Milky Way activated—atmospheric projection technology painting billions of stars across the sky in perfect detail. Beautiful. Achingly beautiful. The kind of beauty that made existing feel even more cruel because it proved the universe could create wonder and chose to fill it with suffering anyway.
Sekitanki looked up at those false stars and felt rage crystallize into something focused. Something that transcended grief. Something that promised violence.
They killed Kaito. Not directly—but by choosing temporal stability over human life. By having the technology to save him and refusing to use it. By turning displaced people into acceptable casualties.
I'm not accepting that. Not anymore.
His hand found the wall, used it to pull himself upright. His legs were mostly repaired—enough to stand, to walk, to run if necessary. The medical nanotech was miraculous, really. Shame it couldn't fix what was broken inside.
He punched the wall. The augmented strength from his reconstructed spine, the accumulated power from few years of becoming something harder, focused into one strike.
The concrete didn't crack. It deformed. Caved inward like tissue paper. Creating a crater that shouldn't be possible from human strength. "Fuck you," he said to the wall. To the city. To the universe that kept taking people he cared about. "Fuck all of this."
Movement in his peripheral vision. He looked up, following instinct.
Seven figures stood on rooftops and skyscrapers surrounding the alley. Not threatening. Just watching. Observing. Cataloguing. A warrior on a building's edge, blade catching neon light—traditional katana merged with technology that made steel sing different songs.
A hacker surrounded by holographic displays invisible to baseline humans—data made weapon, information made dangerous. A medic in shadow-clinic doorway—healing that defied laws because laws had become corrupt.
A pilot beside a hovering vehicle—transportation that broke physics through technologies the government had forbidden.
An engineer in underground workshop entrance—creation that violated regulations because innovation couldn't be contained by fear. A diplomat between faction representatives—words that could prevent or start wars depending on which side paid more.
And deepest in shadow: a figure whose face remained hidden, whose purpose was unclear, whose presence suggested Sekitanki's arrival had triggered something he couldn't yet comprehend.
The warrior stepped forward—close enough now to see details. Young adult, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four. Hair cut short for practicality. Eyes that suggested she'd seen violence and mastered it rather than being mastered by it. She moved with the liquid confidence of someone who'd never lost a fight that mattered.
"Sekitanki Hankō suru hito." Her voice cut through city noise like blade through flesh. "The time traveler who survived four eras. The one who just escaped TRA custody by falling eight stories and walking away. We've been waiting for you."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who understands what it means to be failed by the system. To watch people die because helping them was politically inconvenient." She smiled without humor. "My name is Kurogane Akari. Welcome to Digital Kings. Welcome to the revolution."
"I'm not interested in—"
"Your friend died tonight. Tanaka Kaito. Temporal displacement trauma. The TRA has technology that could cure it—temporal stabilization treatments developed during the Causality Wars. They won't use them because curing displacement might encourage more time travel." Her expression hardened. "They let him die. Chose temporal stability over human life. Made his death a political calculation."
The rage that had been building since Kaito's final breath found focus. Found target. Found purpose beyond just surviving. "They could have saved him?"
"Saved him and every other displaced person who's died from temporal trauma in the past thirty years. But that would require admitting time travel is possible. Admitting they have the technology. Risking more people trying to cross timelines." Akari stepped closer. "They chose order over compassion. Policy over humanity. They killed your friend through deliberate inaction."
Sekitanki's hands clenched into fists. The rage was pure. Clean. Focused. "What do you want from me?"
"Help us wage war in the shadows. Against the systems that let people die. Against the temporal regulations that prioritize stability over life. Against the comfortable future that forgot compassion matters more than control." She extended her hand. "We're building something. A network. A resistance. People who believe displaced people deserve better than slow death in authorized facilities."
Behind her, the other six figures moved closer. Each one a specialist. Each one rejected by the system. Each one choosing to fight in shadows because the light had been weaponized against truth.
"Join us," Akari said. "Make your friend's death mean something. Save the next displaced person before the TRA can decide their life doesn't matter. Fight the war that matters—the one against systems that value order over humanity."
Sekitanki looked at his bloody hands. At the deformed wall. At seven people offering him purpose beyond just refusing to die. I promised Kaito I'd help displaced people. That I'd make his death mean something. That I'd save others in his name.
Maybe revolution is how I keep that promise.
He took Akari's hand. The deal was made. The war began. "Welcome to Digital Kings," she said, her smile genuine now. "Let's show this future what someone who survived the past can do when they stop running and start fighting back."
The seven figures moved as one, melting into Tokyo's neon shadows. Sekitanki followed, leaving behind the TRA, the legal system, the path of authorized existence.
Ahead lay revolution. War in shadows. The kind of fighting that happened in darkness because light had been weaponized by people who'd forgotten what justice meant. And after that home.
But for the first time since Kaito's death, Sekitanki felt something other than grief: purpose. Rage focused into action. The understanding that surviving eras had been preparation for this—for becoming someone who could wage war in shadows and call it love.
The artificial Milky Way reflected in his eyes as he disappeared into Tokyo's darkness. And somewhere in those false stars, seven new stories waited to be written.
Stories of revolution. Of displaced people refusing to die quietly. Of a physicist who'd survived impossible odds learning that sometimes the greatest battles happen in shadows behind the light.
The future had teeth. But so did he. As Sekitanki promised he would return home once more.
[END OF ARC 3: COMMON WARFARE] - [TO BE CONTINUED IN ARC 4: DIGITAL KINGS]