Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

On another quiet and uneventful Winter evening, Tomoe was lazing about in bed at Batra's Inn. It was a place that he often came to for solace and isolation whenever he wasn't thrown orders like a common dog; not that the demanding nature of the cult particularly bothered him either. He respected their flame, their drive, and their willingness to serve Her. Despite all of this, however, he understood that nothing productive could be done about his situation while he stayed as he did. Thus, he decided it was crucial that he fix the curse that the old hag he had gone to see had placed upon him. He wouldn't allow anybody to decide his fate, let alone somebody with no power other than to bring pointless misery to others.

There must be a reason why..., Tomoe thought, placing finger to chin while staring up at his ceiling from the bed.

Allowing the ceiling fan to 'hypnotize' him in a way, he slowly but surely closed his eyes. Perhaps there was something regarding his past that allowed night to follow him so closely? There was something unresolved about how he died the first time that he would need to discover, and would thus more than likely need to force to the surface rather than allow it to arrive naturally.

With a jolt, Tomoe rocketed from his laying position to sit on his bed instead, legs crossed and back straightened.

"I'll find the answer. I gotta.", he muttered lowly after a few deep breaths, desperate in part due to the annoyance of a permanent night sky but also due to its potential hindrance to Her plans if this phenomenon was allowed to continue.

Breath after breath, the Joyan slowly entranced himself into a higher state of being. The clattering of dishes and laughter of patrons from lower floors of the inn slowly faded out, allowing him to focus only on the inner workings of his mind...

The first thing that fluttered into Tomoe's sight upon digging deeper into himself was the faint outline of a large building. He would step inside, and inside would be people drinking and getting rowdy. Cheery music would accommodate the scene which stood in stark contrast to the violent brawls breaking out. After coming to blows with their fists, some fights throughout the building would escalate to fights involving magic. Spells would be flung back and forth, turning a peaceful bar into a war zone. Accompanying the ceaseless violence and enough cussing to make a sailor stutter, was the echoing giggle of a woman. Tomoe felt the woman's laugh was familiar, but didn't know who it could be. A silhouette began forming in his mind, reminding him bit by bit about a woman who was in his life for a small point in time. She was caring, passionate, and radiant. Her form in Tomoe's mind was shapeless and fleeting, but concrete enough to know that she wasn't a figment of his imagination; she really existed to him at some point.

This prompted more images to float through the amnesiac's psyche. Alongside the woman, there was a clumsy yet intelligent man and a tall, proud and foolish man. These three made up a portion of his past, and it felt closer than some distant past from years ago. Rather, this was definitely something more recent. Tomoe didn't know how he knew, but something in his gut told him that it wasn't too late to reach out to these people if he really tried.

Just as he thought that, they began gaining distance from him. The silhouettes moved away from him at a speed he could never hope to match, vanishing from sight over a hazy horizon. Just like that, Tomoe was left alone once more, wandering after them aimlessly.

"Come back..."

As Tomoe's vision returned, all that could be seen was fire. All around him, the amnesiac saw a vast and all-consuming inferno. He was in the middle of a field once rich with crops and vegetation, now being reduced to ashes and rubble. Through the flames he could barely make out a building further away, and began to move towards it. As rain grazed his cheeks from above, desperately and yet hopelessly attempting to extinguish the blaze, he realized that his body was smaller. His perception of the world began to grow smaller, and not just in the physical sense. He felt his mind reverting to a simpler state, his thoughts becoming more and more filled with emotion rather than logic. What emotion might that have been for the young Joyan?

Fear. Panic. Despair. Those emotions, combined with a profound desire to see life preserved, echoed through him. The feelings felt as if they had manifested physically, as if ready to pound out of his chest. His mental state degraded so quickly that eventually he began to run on the pure instinct of a caged animal. The fiery prison around him grew hotter by the second, and eventually he began simply sprinting through its encapsulating body. He shrugged off any burns his body might have sustained in the process, the physical being of the burning boy protesting against all odds.

By the time Tomoe had made it through the labyrinthine inferno and to 'safety', his entire body had been charred. It would normally have been enough to kill a person, and yet oddly his body persisted. There was little in the way of pain, and despite the primal fear the boy wasn't exhausted. There was no way of knowing how he had gotten here, and presumably no way back. It could be said that in the moment, the amnesiac had forgotten his amnesia.

"Where am I...?", Tomoe muttered lowly through ashen coughs, noting his location as now being in front of a rugged looking house.

"Can't go anywhere but forward...", the young boy grumbled, taking note of the flames growing wilder back in the fields.

Tomoe took steps up the porch and moved cautiously towards the front door. Turning the knob, he was quickly met with a defiant 'click'. The knob was stubborn, and refused to open. In other words, it was locked. The boy didn't know whether he had much for physical might, but could feel a frustration - an anxiety, even - boiling inside of him. He let this emotion rise to the front in the form of adrenaline. His muscles burned with intensity not caused by flames, and raised a leg up. With a single forward motion, his foot made contact with the middle of the knob and sent the door crashing forward. The feeble door frame of a house not well kept was sent flying to the ground, and inside was dim light and silence.

Through the darkness, the panicking child could make out a shape. The sight of this shape sent his ears to work as well, followed by the rest of his senses and becoming calm enough to use those senses. Approaching the shape through the darkness only slightly illuminated by the growing flames outside, Tomoe took a step back upon realizing who was before him. Just out of reach - and it did indeed feel like they were infinitely out of reach no matter how much Tomoe moved - was himself. Or rather, the childish and scared version of himself that he also was in the current moment.

This clone of him didn't acknowledge any change to the environment, however; rather, this clone had his eyes fixed ahead, stunned at whatever it is he saw. The real Tomoe, or at least he thought so, aligned his own eyes in the same direction with confusion and curiosity. As if his eyes were witnessing such horrors for the first time all over again, two adults were bleeding from open wounds where their hands once were in a barn nearby. They were in view through a window a decent distance away. They screamed in pain, crumpling to the floor in front of a band of sword-wielding maniacs. As they laughed and cheered, one among them mercilessly brought his sword down on both of their necks and cleaving their heads from their bodies.

The mere sight drove the real Tomoe to fall to the floor in the same position as his double.

All at once, fragments came flooding back into Tomoe's mind like the missing pieces of a puzzle. These pieces weren't like the random worthless pieces that fell under a couch while trying to reveal the image. Rather, these were corner pieces; parts that represented the very foundation of the Joyan's very being. Some would consider it odd that a person would start a puzzle with the center pieces rather than filling in the corners first, but that was simply who Tomoe was; or rather, who he used to be. He was the kind of person to fill in a puzzle from the center working back, rather than the easier and more logical inverse solution. Perhaps he was simply never all that great with puzzles, and by extension, his sense of self if this metaphor were all based on the fragments of his fractured identity.

With a determined glare and newfound resolve, the frightened boy became a resolute youth, standing at his feet while his clone remained frozen on the floor.

"You can stay and rot here. I'm going to go forward.", Tomoe spat at his weak doppelganger that didn't even acknowledge his existence, before dashing out of the house on instinct.

He could hear the murderers of those farmers move in on his clone's house, but Tomoe didn't dare turn back. Even as he heard his own self being massacred, he didn't turn back. The only way he could escape this nightmare was to move ahead and keep advancing until he could advance no more. The fire that surrounded him as he moved back through the flaming fields was matched by the blazing rubies that his eyes had become in that moment. This resolve saw the flames dance around his own movement, avoiding the boy's body as if scared to touch him. He had conquered his fear of this place, and it could do nothing more than make the weakest attempts to slow his pace.

There was nothing left that this nightmare that resembled his childhood could do. He knew that he had already survived that night, and he wouldn't allow himself to be weaker than a challenge he had already prevailed over.

As the sun rose, Tomoe finally turned back to realize that his old farm was nowhere in sight. Thugs hired by a local lord had killed his family but had failed to kill him; this much he was certain was a true element of his past that he had regained. Looking towards the morning horizon and stretching to relieve his stress, he knew he wasn't done with this ordeal yet. There was still more missing - something crucial that he had yet to remember.

As Tomoe began walking along the slightly tiled path of a land so foreign yet so familiar to him at the same time, a burst of nostalgia hit him all at once. It wasn't just due to the area he was in, but also the time of day that filled the young traveller with something resembling true joy. It was as if it had been a while since the boy had seen a clear blue sky. More specifically, and perhaps even more odd, it was the first time in a while since he had seen any kind of sun or daylight at all. It felt as if he was stuck in an infinite darkness and was somehow relieved of that burden. This feeling was partially in the metaphorical sense, but there was a gut feeling for the youth that it was also literal in a very real way. The sensation that his body and mind should be stronger than what they were at the moment also crossed him, but he didn't quite know how to process that.

Nothing about his situation made logical sense, after all; how could he know that he had done all of these things already if, for what his memory told him, it was his first time experiencing this life? It still felt wrong.

He snapped out of these thoughts and stopped in his tracks upon noticing something up ahead. There appeared to be a disturbance of some kind, in which a man in a horse-drawn carriage seemed to be held up by a group of men with swords. Tomoe scoffed at the notion of helping them, knowing full well that this was a world in which the weak died and the strong survived. The strong fought for themselves, after all. Anybody foolish enough to intervene in a situation like that deserved to perish with the rest.

What the hell...?

That made the farmer boy all the more confused when he moved on his own, a hand gripping the hilt of a sword at his side that wasn't yet known to him. In fact, it was the first time he had realized that he had any weapon at all. There was not an ounce of stealth or fear in his steps as his body moved with pride on autopilot towards the bandits.

"Let them go.", a proud voice spoke from the puny and cowardly young farmer boy, Tomoe taking a moment to realize the words he had just spat at the bandits before him.

In disbelief, the trio of cutthroats turned to face the foolish farmer while still keeping their hostage well within their sights and sword range. One stepped forward towards Tomoe, heavily scarred and brutish in appearance. His forehead and brow seemed to poke outward. The result of incestuous lovemaking, Tomoe figured, still not understanding the danger he now faced while simultaneously understanding it all too well. Perhaps he was simply the type, at least in the current point in this ordeal, that fought back his fear with comedy. If he couldn't laugh at the unfortunate circumstances of others, then what could he truly laugh at? Nothing.

"I'm 'onna give ye ten seconds to fuck outta here, boy-a.", the scarred man that Tomoe would simply come to refer to as Incestuo would blurt out in a sluggish and slurred voice.

Even from a distance of three meters away, Tomoe could smell the reeking scent of alcohol on Incestuo's clothing and knew that such evil could not be permitted to remain in the world. It wasn't out of any sense of duty to help the weak or anything of that sort, but simply to prove his own strength. That was the truth. It had to be, didn't it? It was the only thing that made sense to the traumatized traveller as he slowly slid open the sheath containing a golden steel blade. Tomoe was still cautious of the situation, noting that in order to succeed he would need to be fast. Faster than fast; he would need to be like lightning.

As Incestuo counted down the last of his deformed and burned sausage fingers, the oaf then began charging towards Tomoe and quickly closed the gap between them. Underestimating his opponent, it wasn't the farmer with a shiny sword who had moved like lightning that day - it was the scarred man with a convex brow.

As blood flew from an open wound in Tomoe's shoulder, pain coursing through him, the boy fell to the ground with his sword at his side. As that happened, he could see past Incestuo briefly to the sight of the other two bandits grappling with the man in the carriage.

It seemed that in Tomoe's attempt to help, the man had grown confident enough to stage an escape during the chaos. In the current situation, it didn't pay off for either of them. The Joyan was bleeding, but not yet defeated. It was a warrior's blood now rather than a farmer's blood, after all. He wasn't done yet. Tomoe stood to face his adversary once more for another round.

"I'm going to be nice and warn you, Incestuo. Put those fuckin' sausage fingers down and drop the steel. You're going to lose if this continues.", Tomoe spoke once again, his voice not feeling like his own once more.

Despite that, it still felt natural. His vocal chords were adapting to a new manner of speech, and he didn't know how or why. In such a short span of time it almost felt like he was becoming someone else. A mere night ago he was somebody afraid of fire and locked doors. Noting that his body was still that of a child's, it didn't make sense why he would take on such a different attitude. It didn't make sense to his opponent either, however, as he seemed agitated by the comment.

"I-Incestuo? Who de fook do ya think ye are, ye fookin' twig?!", Incestuo roared, taking up the vernacular and posture of a savage beast in equal measure.

That one moment was all Tomoe needed. With a single movement as swift as a river current, the farmer boy swayed and almost glided as he closed the gap between them and delivered an upward slash with his blade at Incestuo's chin. With physical strength unexpected of his current body, the sausage samurai went flying into the air before landing in a pool of blood. Whatever pieces of scrap armor and sewn leather and cloth he had for protection was shattered, and he was unconscious and would definitely die of blood loss without treatment.

It was at that moment that he realized something: a murmur in his blood. It was soft at first, eventually turning into a full vibration as he knelt before the corpse of the sausage samurai. For a moment he stared at the pool of crimson and heavily considered the idea that he could feast on the man's blood. His mouth drooled at the thought before snapping back to it and realizing what he was doing. All at once, memories came flooding back of denizens of darkness. A purpose driven by organics and feasting on 'lower life'. A clan of vampires, that at some point, on some day in the past or future he was one of them. None of it made sense, and in his confused haze he had failed in another aspect.

He looked up from his haunted flashes of memory just in time to see the man from the carriage being impaled on the ground by the remaining pair of bandits. His gaze narrowed and his features dropped realizing that he had failed in a crucial aspect.

More blood filled the soil of the surrounding area, leaking to fill the cracks in some of the dry land and soaking it. Tomoe stared on in a mix of shock and sorrow. In his own weakness, overconfidence and overall incompetence, he had allowed a man to be slain like an animal. They weren't even the kinds of enemies that a true hero would struggle against, and the boy still struggled. There was nothing left to be done except for succumb to the despair that had overtaken him. All at once, the blanket of night overtook the world. The once beautiful horizon and sunny Spring days became nothing more than an endless void above with not a single star in sight. The celestial body of the moon was all that shone above, its milky glow telling the Joyan that this would be his life.

Is this really all I'll ever be...? Will I continue to fail like this?, Tomoe thought, the reflection of his actions finally coming to him.

He tried to be some kind of hero, but he was too immature and unskilled to see it realized. There was little else he could do. He was just a farmer boy, after all. What was there that was left? A deep emptiness rose in his chest seeing fit to consume and crush him. Within mere moments, light would fade from his world and everything his life had built towards would be meaningless.

It was in that moment that his train of thought took a new direction. What had he built towards? Was there something beyond the farming life he had lived in his youth? Beyond that, was there some kind of goal more important than himself? Was merely surviving enough, or was there a greater purpose to his existence? An obligation beyond his own selfishness?

"Maybe there is.", Tomoe spoke aloud just as the void saw fit to consume him.

Around him, what felt like the lightning of a god swirled. Crackling and contorting around him, his body was filled with a newfound power. He didn't know fully who he was, or why he was here. What he knew was that in the moment there was nothing more that he hated than the knowledge that somebody had died without his consent.

Once more the glorious golden blade within his grasp saw movement, being the source of the electrical currents. He raised it skyward with a storm dancing in his eyes, his furious gaze not breaking from the two remaining thugs before him who stared in awe at the display. In that moment, he had remembered his sword's name and the purpose he saw fit to wield it for.

"Face death at Kusanagi's hand, you goddamned shit stains!", the Joyan warrior cried out as a thunderstorm saw fit to shatter the night and bring down bolts of righteous fury upon the two remaining souls present to witness it.

---

Spells used:

Mana: 1400/2400

The moment the smiting light touched the ground, there was nothing. It was as if a new big bang had graced the universe, seeing fit to unravel reality as it was known. Well, in truth it wasn't something quite so dramatic. It was a quake shocking and powerful enough to bring reality back to the Joyan. Contained within his mind was a landscape that he didn't know he could escape, but reality brought him back from the brink.

Tomoe opened his eyes in a cold sweat, back in the present day. His eyes darted around, looking to make sure that he was indeed where he should be. Scanning his environment and realizing that he was still in his inn room, he relaxed. His posture that was tense from both the trance and from the process of waking up had vanished in an instant.

"Thank god.", Tomoe muttered, breathing a deep sigh of relief and wiping the sweat from his brow.

Standing up to stretch, he grasped at his golden blade. Unsheathing it, he scanned its golden frame up and down, pristine enough to see his reflection in. Sheathing it once more, he set it down by his bed and sat down next to it.

It was at that moment when images came flooding back to him all at once, and emotions alongside them. Images of friends without names, of buildings and of conversations without words. The only clear thing that stuck out to him was one: the Fairy Tail guild. Its existence, his time around it in Magnolia, and... of being a member of it? That sounded correct to the amnesiac, struggling to come to terms with his life before HER. He felt companionship whenever he thought back to Fairy Tail, and of genuine sorrow at his parting from them.

Without even realizing it, the ronin had tears streaming down his face. He stared blankly ahead for seconds before coming to the conclusion that his eyes were leaking. Onions, and all that. That had to be what it was.

Just in case... he had to make sure. There would be a ball at Crocus, and people there from all walks of life. People of all guilds. If anyone who showed up as familiar in his memory would attend, he would be there to confront them and get answers once and for all.

Throwing on his gear once more to prepare for the celebration party, Tomoe realized a very important detail. Something he hadn't realized until the moment he was about to bust down the inn door and make his exit.

It was daytime. At some point during that entire trance, he had somehow managed to turn off his night curse. The very sight of this made the Joyan do a merry jig to himself in his room, fist pumping, before making his determined exit. It was finally a new day, and it was a breath of fresh air unlike any other. For the first day in a long time, he truly and genuinely felt he had a purpose to pursue other than for HER.

-Exit-