A Mad Miracle [Open]

A city engulfed in madness - well, now that was a true beacon even through time and space. Many a galactic mystery could feel it existing at this specific point, on this specific date, like a big road sign on the path of time that read "Here is the way to Madness City!", in a language that only few could understand. Obviously, space and time are not really a small place - the chance for someone able to comprehend the signals to actually float by at the correct time was rather slim. Thankfully, for once, someone was searching for signals like these... A man that maybe hailed from earth, or maybe not, holding a crystal in one hand and a cane in the other. And with a smirk, that man surrounded by reflections of light floated right to where the intergalactic beacon was pointing...

So now it happened. Only a few meters away from the Magus of Miracles, the air suddenly... cracked. A sound as if a big rip would appear in paper, it instead occured free-floating in mid-air, as if someone had forgotten to finish creating space there... And the rift was expanding. Slowly opening upwards and downwards, the fabric of this reality was churned up - whatever was behind it, engulfed in a white light, could not be seen, until a vaguely human-shaped black shadow blocked part of it. Said shadow did a step forward, out of the rift and right into Madness City - and with a small snap and electric wavering sound, the portal fell shut behind him, disappearing into light, as if it had never even existed.
And the figure it left behind - the shadow - finally took on form. A rather tall person with slightly odd clothing, and a shimmering crystal sword in his left hand - with a twirl of his wrist, he then threw that shard into the air, and with a short blink of light, it was gone, disappeared just like the rift that had just produced this weird person, who had yet to actually notice the Magus. Leaning onto the cane in his right hand, the man then looked around up into the sky with a weird smirk.
"Ah, Madenise City! Known for fantastic technology keeping it going this far north, a lot of fantastic people, and... Well, this isn't quite what I imagined." The slight chuckle dried up as quickly as it had reached the weird person - his eyes that had just oogled the skyscrapers and other buildings seemingly gazed through the concrete now, as the screams and laughter echoed into his ears, and with a sigh, he turned around - only to finally notice the miracle worker infront of him. And then, with a single laughing noise, a bright smile returned to his face.
"Well, hello there!" A quick step forward, and the world-jumper stretched out his right hand towards the Magus - after switching over his cane to the other. "How nice to meet someone who has not yet inhaled too much of the air here! Honestly, I was hoping to reach the city on a point before the disaster, but we can't all be perfect, now can we? I'm the Second Mage, Zelretch - quite fantastic to meet you." Zelretch identified himself - while talking so fast that one could mean he had swallowed a motor over in his rifts. "I don't actually plan on staying for too long, but I thought I might as well introduce myself. Would be quite rude not to do that!"

The mage with the odd clothing surely had his amount of fun right now. This Battler fellow was quite, in his own words, 'fantastic' for a... Was he a Sugiura as well? Now that was quite interesting, to see Shimura's little children around in this age! He had never travelled so far into his own future yet, and was halfway expecting his own older self to turn up. But hopefully he wouldn't, Zelretch really didn't want to deal with another himself, one was more than enough! So with a smile, the weird traveller just kept on talking and chatting with his fellow magician.
"South. We're in Antarctica."
"Right, right! North, south, east, west, always getting them confused. How was that, the sun goes up in the east? Or was it west? Ah, really, all these planets make it confusing to remember. Just recently I was on a moon in a twin-star system, so how do you decide it there? Terrible things one has to endure to see things, really terrible." Another slightly mad ramble from the smiling mage, but he was neither blocking out Battlers next words nor ignoring them. After all, he was also a gentleman and good fellow, or at least he liked to see himself as that. His old enemy, the Archetype of the Moon, probably had a vastly different opinion on the entire matter.
"Long titles, yes, long titles. Always found them annoying, but people just keep handing them out, do they not? Talking, talking, giving you names and lands and whatever, but it never holds any meaning. Shesh..."
And finally... Zelretch quieted down. Mostly because of how Battler was talking now - about how he had to stay here, how he had to defend and save this city. All this talk of being heroic tended to give him headaches, but miracles? Those intrigued the wizard. But not enough to risk his skin for a random city, oh no! His newfound acquaintance would have to deal with that by himself.
"Ah, well if you have a drive to save this city, I won't get in your way, really now, why would I? Good goal, and all that. But time is a wimy blimy ball, you see? I can rewrite parts, but others are fixed in time. Trying it out on every single occassion is tedious, so I'm more of a tourist that sees the sights of time and the universes, all for fun and amazement. So as much as I'd like to stay and s..." The long-winded explanation suddenly stopped. For once, nobody else had to shut this young Zelretch up, and instead, his eyes went into the interior of one of the buildings to the nearer side of the two. The eyes which had sparked with fun and enjoyment had suddenly become dull, old, and filled with a cold sadness.
"No. No, no, no, no NO!"
Without explaining even one word, the young mage dashed away - leaving behind a small dust cloud in his wake, and if not for the sudden outburst of his voice, it would've even seemed funny. But for once, he wasn't cracking a joke.

If one were to follow him, it'd easily become apparant why he had suddenly dashed away. In this building, on the floor... There was a body. All life had left it - Zelretch saw this on the very first view. His saddened eyes... Were looking down onto the corpse of a boy. Not older than maybe 10 or 12 years, clearly human, and... Unlike many, without the insane grin of the madness on his face. Instead, pure terror - he had been one of the few unlucky enough to die without madness, to die while seeing it. Maybe even by the hands of his insane parents, who could tell? But one didn't need to be a psychiologist to see the true meaning of his face.
Written all over it, in the letters everyone could read. Within dead, cold eyes, the scream for help still echoed. The dried up tears from someone still hoping to be saved, even in total terror. But that hope would never be fulfilled.
"...So simple. So easy. One, two days earlier, and someone would've heard you. Not just one, two or three people maybe. They would've been here, you would be save. And not... on the ground, and so... dead." A voice like a whisper, but not only filled with sadness, but also with an underlining anger. "Why... why wasn't I here? Damn Kaleidoscope - what is the meaning of it, if it can't save A SINGLE CHILD?!"
A sudden scream, and the left fist of Zelretch collided with the next-best wall - the crushing noise of concrete and metal being blown apart, and within that dust, glowing eyes of a beast.
"Battler? We're going to war."

What had started as a small little journey through time... had turned into this mess. Madness... What Zelretch and Battler were about to do, that was madness as well. To fight something one could not see, comprehend, or attack - only a fool would fight the black blood without a plan. And for someone from the past to interfere with the present - that was foolish as well. Would time allow for it?
But as the old Wizard watched his 'young' collegeaue close the boys eyes, Zelretch didn't care about that insanity. Sure, he was about to break any conventional law of time-travel, and spit in the face of reason, but that was what he was known for. Sure, he couldn't travel back another five days and save these people - doing so would rip apart his own timeline and erase him from the universe. But he could do one thing, make the ones responsible pay for what they had done here. After Battler returned, the madman with the cane nodded - his face, which was normally so friendly, had been darkened today.
"Hope? The one thing that we have, but they don't, you're more intelligent than most people already. Soul Society, or whichever other afterlife, still better than floating through this pile of madness. I guess we must be mad for heading deeper into it. Oh who am I kidding, we are mad." Turning around slightly, Zelretch grasped onto what only he could see, only he could feel - the cracks between, the rippling of this event in the grand sheme of the multiverse. Of course, this event meant nearly nothing on said grand sheme, but even the ripplings of worlds knew better than to mess with an angry Zelretch looking for answers on something.
"How typical, the center of the city is also the center of this madness. One moment you think the worst thing from your government is a tax raise, next they stab you in the gut with a pen." With a short shake of the head, eyes closed, Zelretch did the first steps - steps towards answers, towards the ones responsible. And if he had to warp the entire source of this madness onto the surface of mercury, they wouldn't get away from him. ...
And even if they did... It'd require them another miracle to get away from the miracle sorcerer that he had allied with now. High above them, on a balcony of the building that Zelretch had just given a sizeable crack in the wall, the only current watcher stood - tall, white, made out of granite, the statue of an angel, with eyes covered by the own hands.

So their walk started - two madmen, running deeper into their own doom, for sure. Magicians, one would assume, should know better than to challenge an opponent that they didn't know, but normal Magicians also didn't travel through time or create miracles with their minds. The body language of Zelretch seemed to have calmed down now - while his posture did not seem agressive anymore, his eyes still had that deep sparkle within them, a clear sign of warning for anyone smart enough to see the small signs. The anger within the dimension sorcerer had not subsided in the slightest, but...
Even in this state, Zelretch noticed. The eerie silence around them... What caused it? Himself with his small outbreak? No, not possible. Mad people did not feel fear, they wouldn't run from the shock of a building obtainin a small crack. It'd have been more likely for them to come running to see, if they even still had some curiosity in their broken minds. Was it a silencing spell?
"You know, I swear that I heard screaming a few moments ago."
And with those words from Battler, that possibility was gone - a silencing spell would've made his words unhearable too. The younger old Wizard stopped his own steps not half a second after his ally - around Zelretch, for a brief second, something 'resonated' - a small pulse, like mirror shards breaking away from him, and in his free hand he was holding a short sword made out of crystal - having pulled it from the space between dimensions with a mere thought, this was the Jewelled Sword of Zelretch, the first Mystic Code of known history.

Slowly Zelretch turned around to Battler, and even though the eyes of the old wizard were focused onto his crystal sword, his ears picked up the words of his newfound friend easily. Swinging the crystal around from side to side, like a pendulum, before flipping it upwards again and spinning it around itself - Zelretch was not simply seeing refracted lights within this blade. To his eyes, within this shard of his own power, he analyzed and 'saw' the boundaries of each reality and dimension, known or unknown.
"Quiet... too quiet, you're right. No screaming, no kicking, not even a crackling fire in the background? No, the entire city block is silent, and even more outside of it... Odd, I did not think..." murmuring in his usual, fast voice, Zelretch only stopped when his ally spoke of angel statues. The eyes that had studied the energies within the Jewelled Sword instantly shot upwards, right at Battler, and...
Besides the righteous anger towards the madness within them, the eyes that were so much older than the outer body spoke of a nameless horror. For a split second, it seemed like Zelretch was not simply worried, but afraid. Then his head turned... and he saw the same angel statues as Battler did.
"Oh, by all twenty frozen hell moons! How did... no matter. Battler, follow my voice. Back away from them, and follow me, just like that, okay? Whatever you do, do not break eye contact, you hear me?" Zelretch turned around to the direction they had been heading into again - just to notice something in the corner of his eye and nail it to the ground with a quick look.
"Not even for one moment can you look away. Don't blink, don't even blink, or we're as good as dead. They don't just want us, or they'd have killed us already. Don't know if that's better or worse." His Jewelled Sword was stashed away between dimensions again, trying to grab one of the arms of his fellow wizard with the now free hand to drag him further into their target direction.
"These... things, they're called Weeping Angels. And whatever you do, don't blink. ... And don't look into their eyes once their hands are removed, or we're in trouble. Even more trouble than we are already, I mean."