Chapter 3: Nothing Can Be Explained
Fight...? First off what the hell is happening right now? What does she mean by any of that?! What could any of this even mean?!
I glance over toward her as if shes insane, "Yeah, you are me, I am you. Where you go I go am I right-" Suddenly she grabs me by the collar before giving me a dead serious look that could kill an army of men in seconds.
"This is serious you ass! Come on, I swear I'll explain everything in just a bit, but first we have to face what's ahead of us!" She nervously turns back towards the disgusting patchwork of bodies, oddly enough they look somewhat familiar, but I just can't seem to put my finger on why...
I perk my chin up and stand proudly, "Well alrighty then! that thing might be huge but it damn sure looks frail! I can rip it apart in one go! Just watch me!" I begin running and making a charge toward the colossal stitched creature and I jump up into the air, given it is only about a foot off the ground before suddenly I-
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I watched him jump up into the air swinging boldly and wildly at the colossal vacant, what the hell is he doing?! Does he even know how to use his Arcana?! Suddenly I watch as it brings its disgusting clawed limb down toward him, "Jiji! Watch out! You haven't even used your Arcana you're going to die!" That's when it happens, I once again see another one of myself get crushed by himself...I have to act quickly if I want to correct things! I have to use my five second window...
I grab the bright light emanating from my very heart, "Arcana of Causality! Undo that which has been done! Reverse time!"
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Fight...? First off what the hell is happening right now? What does she mean by any of that?! What could any of this even mean?!
I glance over toward her as if shes insane, "Yeah, you are me, I am you. Where you-" Suddenly she grabs me by the collar before giving me a look of someone who is serious yet exhausted to the point of no return.
"Yeah yeah...where you go I go right!" I see her huffing heavily, "Y-you reckless bastard..." Why the hell is she calling me reckless?! What's even going on right now? I'll just charge that damn thing and get this all over with, it looks frail- Wait a minute, it looks frail, I remember saying this but...I don't think I have, right? I then see her glance over at me with a look as if she knows something that I don't.
"I had to...exhaust everything I had to turn back time because you rushed in and got killed."
What?! She turned back time and...oh no she's collapsing...I catch her as she falls over before she had began speaking through a hushed whisper.
"Jiji...your Arcana! I'm spent...please use your Arcana! Y-you have to...I'm done from here..." She passes out then and there in my arms the light fading from her chest, it almost feels like I'm in one of those really tense shounen manga where the main character's best friend dies and he gets a CRAZY rage boost, however I do not know her therefore I do not care, also what the HELL is an Arcana?! Wait a minute...
I face the gigantic creature creature with a smirk, "I'll use my Arcana you bastard! Heheh..." Suddenly the creature begins walking toward me, here goes nothing I guess...
"Tch, I am thou...thou art I- and uh..." I see the...thing approaching me quicker now, isn't some giant spirit supposed to pop out behind me?! She said something about an Arcana or whatever! Come on man!
Suddenly its standing right above me, I gulp hard before falling over on my rear end in submission as I crawl away from the thing, "H-hey take it easy big guy! C'mon! We can surely talk something out! Make some arrangements! H-hey! Hey WAIT A MINUTE-" Suddenly I'm kicked by a mangled yet sturdy foot as I fly into a building within the monochromatic landscape I'm currently trapped in, and let me tell you this has to be the single most painful experience I've ever been through, there's a bone popping right out of my elbow, lying in the debris I look down at my right leg, has it always been twisted two-hundred-seventy degrees counterclockwise facing my chest? I don't believe it has ever done that at all...thats new.
Suddenly to my horror I see the creature bend down grabbing...well her name isn't actually Amelia, but you know damn well who I'm talking about! Anyways...I see it grabbing Amelia before it squeezes her with the unrelenting force, its claw like appendages protruding from its hands almost like a sick twisted sort of vice made specifically for humans, the pain jolts her awake from being unconscious, she begins screaming in pain and...this, this pisses me off quite a lot, I feel an unrelenting wrath burning within myself, I feel my very heart burn brightly...I can't control myself!
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The pain...its, its unbearable! I feel as if my organs are about to be pushed out through my throat, my ribs crack puncturing my lungs before blood begins to pool from my mouth, is this the end...? More importantly where's Jiji...? I at least hope he's safe, another shall take my place...Suddenly I hear a roaring boom as the strange patchwork vacant topples over releasing me from its grasp, I'd say I have about a second and a half left of reversal causality left in me, while I can't use causality on myself, I can use it to reverse phenomena, such as rejecting pain and the concept of injury, "C-Causality reversal...unburden an interval of time, free it from the burden of injury!" I successfully erased the concept of injury from the moment that the vacant began crushing my organs effectively negating what's happened in the last second and a half, although I'm still shot on energy at the moment, I can at the very least sit upright and crawl if I need to. Then I hear Jiji's voice, he's alive but something is wrong...
I see his hair standing on end, taking on a bright purple hue, the tips of his hair becoming that of a white flame slowly fading into his purple tinted hair as he stands there wide eyed huffing and puffing, "I WON'T...I WON'T LET ANOTHER ONE GET HURT! NOT AGAIN!" He suddenly bursts forth in rage when it hits me, I am Jiji, and Jiji is me, I see him angrily wailing on the beast sending volleys of purple and white energy from his fists, every punch sending forth a shockwave as I begin remembering my childhood...our childhood.
All throughout my life there have been many, many women, I've grown up with almost no males within my life, the only one I truly trust being my uncle, and well...obviously myself. I remember it like it was yesterday, I used to have a friend named Mari, she was such a sweet girl but then suddenly her family broke apart and lost contact with mines. Years later her parents reconnected with my own, and later that same night, my parents had told me that she ended up ending her own life due to severe depression, after our families split she couldn't make any other friends, I was her only friend. She had stopped eating entirely due to the psychological pressure and on top of that all the bullying she went through, and began withering away slowly until eventually her parents opened her door one day, only to find her hanging there from her ceiling fan. It turns out when a girl starves herself her eighty pound body weight and almost skeletal frame can easily be held up by a rope and a ceiling fan.
Not even my Arcana of Causality can bring her back, just as we humans do, Arcana's also have limits.
Not even four years later my father began drinking heavily, he was abusive and one late saturday night he struck my mom with a glass vase after they had an argument and began brutalizing her in front of me, I quickly ran to the family dog enclosed in a cage who seemed just as protective and enraged as I was. After unleashing the dog upon our father, he jumped high into the air getting a clean bite off on our fathers neck before he fell to the ground alongside the canine releasing my mom from his grasp. By the time the paramedics came he was left unrecognizable, only being identified by the Japanese kanji for life which he had tattooed onto his forearm, luckily my mother recovered, however I couldn't say the same for my father, he passed away when paramedics were en route to my home after I called the police in an emotionally broken and frantic state. I indirectly had murdered my own father and had watched my mother get beaten half to death.
I feel guilty for not having my Arcana back then, even though I had no clue what an Arcana even was, I could barely save my own mother, even then the dog did most of the dirty work for me...I can't save anyone at all.
I long held onto a hope of being able to turn back time and make everything right, the pure essence of the dread I held onto in my heart manifested into the Arcana of Causality, however despite us being the same person just in different timelines, even the slightest thing can make a person's mindset differ. His experiences led him to awaken a truly horrific ability...The Arcana of Wrath.
I sit there on my knees taking heavy yet restrictive breaths watching as Jiji pummels the patchwork vacant into the ground with ferocity, "DIE YOU PIECE OF SHIT! I'LL NEVER ALLOW A LOWDOWN PIECE OF TRASH LIKE YOU TO HURT A WOMAN CLOSE TO ME AGAIN!" I see him jump an ungodly height into the air, suddenly the aura surrounding him disappears and his hair returns to normal, all that wrathful energy focuses into his fist before with an unrestricted sense of confidence and rage he yells.
"WRATHFUL ARCANA! FINAL GAMBIT!!!"
A purple meteor of pure white and purple flame begins to make a beeline, albeit a somewhat slow one, toward the barely breathing vacant mangled within a crater. I realize something...that meteor is making its way toward me as well... I can't even move! Is he TRYING to kill me AND the vacant?! Oh no! Oh no!
I then feel a pair of hands scoop me up and I see him, Jiji has landed back down to the ground safely, carrying me as I see his eyes still serious with his pupils donning a purple hue, he still has residual energy left, he pours everything into his legs as he begins running, he manages to break the very sound barrier shattering the realm just as his final gambit collides with the ground and returning us back home in the very spot we entered from.
The shattered rift slowly closes itself sealing the explosion within, we'll live to see another day.
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I sit there staring up at the moon, that girl claiming to be me lying next to me takes one last exhausted breath before passing out once again. I lie there staring at the moon as I process whatever the hell just happened to me...
Guess today was not my lucky day.
It never is.