A Lost Soul | Azure Iramasha's Return

Funeral was done, now came the putting to rest. Chifuyu gave a sigh of resignation when it was and her daughter knew it wasn't any happy return back to her planet. It wasn't fair, her return should've been a happy one if you asked Aria.

It was not. She knew where she was going to land. The middle of nowhere, where there would be no damage or problems with falling over four hundred kilometres towards the planet's surface. Before she left it was reaffirmed for the martian-human hybrid to be good and stay where she was.

The issues with atmospheric reentry where pretty easy for Chifuyu to deal with. She could handle high levels of heat and pressure and when she landed she used her soul evolution to harness all that energy and spread it out through the whole continent rather than it all crashing down on a single point and creating a huge crater.

The other benefit of nowhere was that it should be with minimal people and eyes. There would be the odd person, from afar Saisei was nothing but a speck who was a little to close to what looked like a falling meteorite. That meteor never struck though. Chifuyu's silhouette just stood where it appeared like it was going to crash, roughly two hundred metres from Saisei.

"Right. Time to go send someone off."

She said to herself but got just a little distracted by faint words reaching her ears. Prompting the Yuudeshi to turn around and look at the collapsed form of a kid. How sad a kid like that was out here like this. Didn't he know better? The world was ending.

Chifuyu started towards him before that advance came to an abrupt stop. Her heart skipped a beat, the concept of a heart inside her anyway. That hair, impossible though. The world had a way of mocking you she knew, letting old fantasies and wounds fill her with false hope was a fool's mistake that she had long since tried to get rid of.

"Hey kid. You know it's an apocolypse, right? You shouldn't be out here."

She said. Her emotions demanded that she acknowledge it, there was no reason this man couldn't be Azure but her logic weakly rejected the implausible idea. She was in full view, her long white hair and distinct purple eyes said all that they needed to for Saisei despite the fact she had grown in the five years since they had seen each other. This person knew him.

Was he okay? A rhetorical question for the most part. He was very clearly not okay. Chifuyu was just trying to figure out how this could affect him so much to the extent it has. Going off the basis of this was a stranger, a kid that didn't know anything or have any weight in the world with his name. He wasn't Azure.

She watched him compose himself. Clean himself up and get his head together. He was struggling though, that much was easy for her to discern with the way he had to orientate himself and reassure that this was real. That she was real and she wondered if that also extended to himself. Instinctually her hand came up and placed itself on his head reassuringly. He didn't need to smack himself.

"I'm Chifuyu, Chifuyu Yuudeshi. You're asking a lot of strange questions, kid. I'll entertain you though."

It was a casual jest but Chifuyu's actions were driven differently. The man she came here for could not be saved, only put down now. The nostalgic boy she encountered could be saved, in the past she'd have ignored him. It's not about being liked as a leader, they don't need to be your friend you could get much more done if you stopped wasting your time like that.

The amused tone of Azure burned itself into her head as some kind of cheery response. Small things did matter, though it once would've pained her to acknowledge.

"I can only answer two of those questions, how am I supposed to know why you did what you did or what you are?"

Chifuyu did find his questions peculiar though. The soft smile vanishing when he said his final question and made her stare at him warily. She wondered if she had hallucinated it.

"...What is your name anyway? Introductions go both ways you know."

"It's nice that you want to help people. That's an admirable trait."

She praised. Chifuyu was the opposite of him, a pillar that showed no signs of cracking under any amount of pressure. The very opposite of the boy that was falling to pieces. She felt it was better to emphasis him rather than treat this boy like he was a cocoon, something to be discarded after Azure went through a chrysalis. All the signs told her that this was not a coincidence, denying it would only tarnish the reputation she gave herself of being so smart.

"Saisei. That's a nice name. I'd be a little upset if you didn't know my name to be honest."

Chifuyu remained stationary when he turned away. It was important to her not to be pushy, rather let him find his own way through his turmoil and only offer help. She didn't want to force her interference into this. The bias would be a bit too much, this boy after all would be a small price to pay for Azure back. The Azure she knew though would loathe such course of action.

When he turned around and spat hostilities at her she just cocked her head. Her arms moving a little out and giving her pose a resigned look of disappointment. Not for his actions of course, that he found himself in such a tough situation.

"We don't get to choose how life goes Saisei. Is it fair that you are the way you are? No. There's no reason why you should be subjected to this situation of being a fragment of a dead man. Beyond the small, ever so unlikely chance that it just happened to be you out of the infinite other possibilities."

So far she had given him nothing that he asked for really, hate her as he needed because of it. She reached down and took his chin, raising it up until he met her purple gaze.

"If you really feel that way, why do you fight and resist it? You say you're tired of dealing with this and wanting it to be over with but you still referred to yourself as Saisei. Twice."

Chifuyu leaned down until they were level. Her voice was very firm on Saisei, and her gaze was focused on his eyes. If they were windows to the soul then who did she see look back at her? Azure, or this boy? Maybe both? She asked her next question with a faint smile, time to see how well he knew himself.

"Why don't you tell me about the Azure Iramasha you know?"

It was a little cute, in a twisted way. The idea of free will and choice was alien to him, it scared him. He was a bird looking at the horizon with a steep fall and the choice to try and fly or fall down to the ground. If that ground was sickly and black, filled with the boy's inner demons as predators that wanted to devour that little bird.

It pained her to see him in such a state, she didn't know him but he brought back painful memories. It was hard not to see the form shift and show a transient image of the man who had departed and left everything in the hands of others. At the centre of it, he had done nothing wrong. Fate had just dictated that he be the one to bear the cross and suffer for it like a lamb to the slaughter.

"He was important to me, he was important to a lot of people. He left much unaccomplished and many things to be done. In part I blame myself, I left his side to fight. I didn't consider his descent into becoming an empty shadow of himself as concern. He still did what he had to do after all."

She bit her lip at his last part, it showed how far he wanted to just fall off like the fight was pulled out of him and the sad smile of resignation bit at her. Her serene calm broke when she stood back up and pulled him onto his feet with a slap to follow it up that broke the silence she had let take hold.

"Because it's not my place to bring him back you stupid kid. You heard Desmond Hayden, does that sound like a man begging to be brought back? A man with family, friends and so much left he could do. No, he entrusts the future to them. The Azure I knew would never ask me to sacrifice an innocent kid to bring him back!"

Her voice came out louder with a lot more anger like the way he spoke about himself was a personal offense to her.

"I wished him back years ago, then I would've sacrificed more than a child for it and accepted every bit of scorn he gave to me for it. Hate me, loathe me. If that's what he needed to do. You shouldn't be asking for that. So what if you're Azure."

It hurt to say to him. Chifuyu's hand let him go, wanting to see if he had the strength to hold himself up after her words.

"So what if you're Azure Iramasha... You're not him though, you're Saisei. Even if you delude yourself into the illusion of being nothing more than a cup to be filled with the contents of Azure- you'll never be him. Even if you accept that fate you set before you- you won't be Azure. You can't."

That was the truth. Azure died the moment the moon was destroyed. The mystery of the moon massacre but her words weren't said without a purpose. There was a reason it all built up to, her next question.

"So Saisei, tell me.. Do you want to drown in the idea of being nothing but Azure's sacrificial lamb or do you want to accept this part of you, grow beside it and be ready to decide your fate for yourself?"

It was what it was. One had to accept the reality of their situation rather than delude themselves with fantasies of playing God. For Chifuyu that was hard, when you had such range of scope it became hard to not let your ego grow and become arrogant. Put yourself above natural laws that you can interfere with. In the past there was no such restraint. A snap of her fingers, Azure back. End of story.

That wasn't her now though. Some things were better left as resolved and instead focus on the future. That was what she had come to decide for herself. It was her resolution and she had to be steadfast with it, the same way that he had found his resolve in the situation.

He made a request and she responded, it didn't take any time at all for her. Maybe because she used her reasoning to already come to the conclusion that she expected this situation to lead to him asking for her aid in some way or form the moment that he revealed himself as a reincarnation.

"Sure. Now, if you're done with your mental breakdown. Let's go."

It came out incredibly harsh, not mincing her words but she had a faint smile on her face when she turned away if he caught it. Her apathetical attitude did show a little more enthusiasm as well, it had been a little surprising but she was Chifuyu Yuudeshi. Such composure wouldn't be shook for long.

"Where do we begin, Saisei? Oh, but keep in mind if I help you then you help me. Alright?"

It was just fair like that, she couldn't let her sentiment towards Azure give him a free pass. For the extent of their time together he might as well be what Chifuyu was to Azure. To the man she was a pupil and maybe a friend, but to Chifuyu she might as well have been her God with how harshly she commited herself to meeting his expectations until she became his friend.