"Mami?! Mami, where are you?!"

Distress could clearly be heard in the voice of the man, the all-but-retired hero known by and large to the majority of the world as 'Kamina,' as he hollered and screeched at the top of his lungs as if that alone would bring forth even some apparition or specter of his lost companion -- any hint or clue that she was safe and here and everything hadn't just been one big old effed up dream. Kamina didn't even like dreams all too much, so on that front one might understand his aversion to those of the effed up variety. But at any rate, he could neither doubt nor affirm that he had just woken up from a long dream, because the ground on which he was now standing, with his shoulders tensed and fists clenched, was neither familiar nor unfamiliar. That was to say, he felt like he could have feasibly woken up here based on the memories he possessed of the moments before he blacked out, even if he'd never actually seen this exact place before. But that hypothetical scenario would've required the enlistment of some ungodly copious amount of alcohol, and possibly a few opiates. Oh, and women with downright intoxicating curves. And a highly irresponsible attitude towards the partaking of all of those things.

Okay, that was enough focusing on the past. Right now, what was important was that he needed to find her. His friend.

Friend? He turned the word over in his mind. What even were they at this point?

Kamina closed his eyes and let out a big sigh, and then began running through the streets, trying not to bump into the people, but failing at that attempt, of course. Now was so not the time for weird girly drama. This was all possibly a matter of life and death, and -- that's when his mind registered the screaming. The wild, panicked, hysterical screaming. Kamina stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around, his bewildered expression on display for the city. While Kamina had been running toward where he presumed the center of the city to be, all of these folks seemed to be fleeing in the opposite direction. Either the cops had just broke up one hell of a wild party, or Kamina was missing something. Grabbing a guy by the arm and yanking him so close to his face that he would be able to feel the spit flying from the agitated man's mouth, Kamina crushed their foreheads together and began to shout over all the mania.



"What the hell is going on out here? Why's everyone acting like someone just dropped a stink-bomb in the middle of the city?"

His temporary captive was struggling against him, as if he would die if he wasted another second, but still he seemed to decide to respond to Kamina's rather clueless demands. "No stink-bomb," he stated with a heavy, flinty accent that seemed to be characteristic of this region. "Disaster's coming. We're running for cover." Finally, he broke himself free of Kamina's harsh grip and took off down the sidewalk without so much as another word of explanation. Groaning out his frustration loudly, Kamina bolted for the middle of the street, which was very much devoid of vehicles and very much chock-full of frantic citizens. Completely fed up, he screamed to the air:

"OH FOR THE SAKE OF PETE, SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!"

And someone did.

"Dumbass! Get away from the center unless you wanna die!" The kid was yanking Kamina away from where he had been headed as easily as if the man were a thin flag blowing behind him in the wind. This brat has some kind of strength, he thought. And then, the boy kept on yelling. "IDIOT!! Do I have to save everyone in this damn city? A storm is coming -- a storm. They called it the Storm of A Thousand Years last time because of how utterly destructive it was and how many people were killed. But it hasn't happened for over two hundred years," he sighed impatiently, as if he'd had to tell this story over two hundred times. "Now you're obviously not from around here, but I thought even an idiot like you would know that if the sky's pitch-black at midday, something's wrong!"

Kamina felt a vein thumping on one of his temples, and he closed his eyes against all the stress these people were causing him. He had just been passed out for an undetermined length of time on a sidewalk. He didn't know what the hell time of day it was! But something told him that he wouldn't further his case by any amount if he tried explaining that to this kid. So instead, he did what he did best: scream his head off.

"Just set me down!" He howled. "If it's as bad as you say, then I really have to find Mami! She's probably looking for me too!"

"You mean the other foreigner? I knew I've seen you two before," he mused sort of calmly as he released Kamina to tumble to the hard ground. "Well, I'm pretty sure your girlfriend got on the first or second bus and is headed for safety as we speak."

Kamina stood up quickly and breathed a sigh of relief as he finally got a good look at the kid, who looked no more than eight or nine years old and had skin a shade or two darker than Kamina's was.

Wait a sec...

Had this little runt just called Mami Kamina's girlfriend?!

That's called rain.

Even without looking up at the sky, it was quite clear now to Kamina, and likely to everyone else, that it was coming down by the bucket -- but he tipped his heavy head back to face the inky, sickly churning clouds anyway. He'd heard a siren start off with a trumpet from somewhere far off, and he closed his haggard eyes against the sort of penetrating braying noise. At first, he hadn't registered if and when the pipsqueak had gone off on his way, but Kamina kind of found that he was glad the kid had left him alone. Image after image jogged and skittered through his mind, like one morning where he was eating breakfast in his bed-nook underground and not knowing one way or another that rain or dreadful storms existed or transpired. And then another image passed through as if it were on its way in some great big hurry and couldn't be late to wherever it was going, and it came to him in just as much of a rush that he was remembering the first and only time he'd seen and experienced rain.

It was the morning he'd swore he was going to die. Although a tad brighter, the skies had appeared much like they did today; the clouds had looked like they wanted to vomit or liked they'd drank something and decided they didn't want it anymore and were getting ready to spit it out and spray it everywhere. Except back then, Kamina hadn't been able to explain or even fathom what was about to happen. He hadn't been able to come to grips with why it had made him feel so sick and awfully dreadful all the way deep down in his stomach, either. At that time and also right now, he had reckoned that something like the smell of rain should have brought happiness and rejoicing to his heart, but all he'd felt was --

Not fear. He didn't fear.

Besides, he judged thoughtfully. It wasn't actually the rain's fault. It hadn't been back then, and it wasn't now. That day, as he was hoisted by his allies out of his mecha all bloodied and wheezing and convulsing but far from broken, the rain had begun to fall. He remembered that everyone had indubitably believed him to be a dead-and-goner even if they wouldn't say it with their mouths, and he even heard a few of his men and good friends cursing the weather in his name as well as their own. He hadn't been able to talk then because if he had been, he would've corrected them all proper right there. Kamina didn't hate the rain at all. The rain perdurably swooped in at just the right time, after all the ugly and all the sick and all the crazy, and its only wish was to patiently and beautifully wash the earth clean of the blood and lust and pride and wrath that stained it so savagely. Gracious gods didn't exist, and so rain was one of the things to be revered, something to be taken in with an open silver heart -- but he knew needed to live in order to prove that to anyone. And Mami had to live, too, if the feelings that he had now coursing through all his body held any salt at all.

His bare skin was soaked and so were his thick murky brown pants, "utility pants" as he called them though they apparently weren't so sturdy as he'd thought, and he felt a shiver drive through the breadth of his chest even though it was quite warm out there in the outdoors still. He came back to the world clearer than before, and with a jolt he heard a loud shoom shboom crack and a sort of angry grr grrr guhrmm and his shocked gasp turned quickly into an ecstatic grin as he remembered those noises to be what his old comrade Yoko called "thunder." He ran a big hand through the matted locks of hair on his head that were trying now to hang all sloppy and wet over his sort of lidded eyes like they were sopping curtains of blue tarpaulin or burlap. After it was all slicked back he still felt the streamlets of rainwater trickling onto his neck, but he was fine with it because at least now he could see where he was going.

He didn't know when his legs had started him walking again, but he was glad they had, for where they had taken him he would never have thought to turn. He had been planning to search for this so-called shuttle station in the probability that he could bum a ride and reach the same destination as Mami, or even find her there at the station; but now where he stood was in front of a sort of tavern. Even though Kamina stood unarguably on the glorious surface, this kind of shambly beat-up place looked just like the types of tumbledown set-ups he'd frequented underground once he'd become of-age, though this one being slightly larger and not exactly protruding from a dirt wall. He moved the dirty, stained, damp little cloth to the side and ducked under the opening into the main room and hoped to see someone within, this place sitting just a bit farther away from the town center and therefore being a bit less likely to have been hit by the full brunt of all the panic yet, even if the whooshing of the wind and the beating of the rain against the rooftop would've had to have been at least a little noticeable.

And sure enough, even though it was by and large empty of the living souls of patrons and even the familiar heavy and almost stifling stench of liquor and men that any self-respecting bar-type place should have at all times, he spotted an old bearded geezer standing behind the counter and leaning on it in a sort of bored and impassive way like today was just any old other slow-traffic day. Kamina sort of smiled to himself. This guy had to know what was going on outside even if he didn't register the storm as anything out of the ordinary because his business had completely emptied out. He could tell it had happened suddenly, too, because there were unfinished drinks and decks of cards and other leisurely type things strewn everywhere. So that must have meant that this dude just didn't care. Kamina could sort of respect that, but he was also very very curious. He had taken a breath, fully prepared to raise his voice like usual and introduce himself, but the old man was already slamming a big fiendish glass of what looked like some hard kind of whiskey down on the countertop.

"Ain't got any more cash on me, geezer, sir," he spoke up in a respectful way that sort of surprised him to hear coming out of his own mouth. "Used it all last night if you, uh, know what I mean."

The man was gazing at him quizzically, like Kamina was talking some kind of lizard language, but shoved the glass forward so far it looked like it would fall off the counter if the shirtless blue-haired man didn't lunge forward and grab it fast, which he did. That was when he realized he was still shivering. Understanding it all in an instant as some sort of great gesture of kindness, Kamina nodded and then tipped his head back and downed the fiery liquid all in one go.

"Thank you very much!" He exclaimed; the warmth had already began coursing through him in waves. Then he heard a gust of wind and sheets of rain coming through the cracks in the wood from the outside, and he swore the place swayed to the side. On the inside he shrieked a little but on the outside he looked as strong and resolved as ever as he folded his arms and jutted his chin out to address the old-timer. "Anyhows, you got any idea where I can find this shuttle station?" After a beat, the guy uttered what sounded like Uh? except with that damned weird stiff accent, and Kamina could already tell that this guy no speaky his language.

He stepped up closer and peered into the elder's thick gray eyebrows, like as if eye contact would help the poor fellow understand him any better -- but he reasoned that maybe it would and maybe it was one of those weird psychological quirks people supposedly had. Kamina didn't know much about it, but he figured maybe he'd give it a little try and so he opened his mouth. He decided to speak more simply, too. "I," he began slowly, pointing at his chest with his whole hand. "Looking," he said with a quick few jabs toward his eyes and some real nice blinking. "For friend." He finished his statement at last by miming a pair of round tits with both of his hands. "You understand?"

It took a few moments, but the man finally opened his mouth, too. "I sorry," he replied. "No breast, only drink." The old man looked quite satisfied with himself, but Kamina only groaned and slammed his palms against his forehead in frustration.

"No, old-timer," he tried again. "My friend took a bus. I need the bus." He sort of made a motion like as if he were driving a vehicle high off the ground and adjusting some invisible brimmed hat and convulsing in place like the bus had just hit a series of bumps. Another crack of thunder sounded and Kamina jumped for real.

"Boss?" The man attempted repeating.

"Oh, dammit to hell!" Kamina screamed loudly. "Screw this, I gotta go before this place collapses! I'll find Mami even if I have to swim to a mountaintop!" He made his rather large vow and then began rushing for the "door" he'd come through, when the man called out Oi! in a deep, thick kind of voice and when Kamina looked, the barkeep was pointing toward a heavy slab of wood on the wall to the back that looked sort of like a proper door that the man in all his preoccupation hadn't even noticed at all before.

"Boss ride that way," he enlightened Kamina at last.

"Oh! Thanks!" He beamed. He began to jog to the door but when he opened it, he stopped right where he stood, even as the rain marched in like an army of men with whips and gave his shoulders and his face a good hard lashing. He turned around to face the elderly dude with a hopeful look on his face. "Y'know, old-timer, you're all right. But I think you should get out of here. The world is already short enough on real men like you." And then without any further pressuring the man, Kamina gave a big grin and a nice wink and sprinted off on his way. He could already see lots of tiny bright bright blinding yellow lights flashing in the distance like stars and heavenly saviors, and the people below them just as tiny, screeching and clamoring and heaping one on top of the other with their own desires of what the lights would provide.

"Mami!" He swished through the rising ocean of rainwater and shouted the only thing that mattered above the racket of storming and siren-braying. "I'm on my way!"

A chain link fence was the first thing Kamina came upon after leaving the tavern.

The second was a dead body.

The pale, waterlogged thing bobbed up and down, its face submerged in the rainwater, almost as if the corpse was a kid who was very much alive and just playing a childish joke on his friends at the beach. And the body did belong a boy, from the looks of it, no older and no larger than the Simon of his memory. Kamina felt sick. He had to turn away quickly when the body neared him; he gripped hard at the fence, pressing his chest against it as the dead kid floated past. He knew it wasn't Simon -- how could it be? -- but his eyes still widened in terror and he swallowed against dizziness. He felt an overwhelming sense of dread all of a sudden, a looming and imminent and very personal sense of danger, and he couldn't reason why.

That feeling, coupled with something about the last look he saw on the old man's face before turning away back at the tavern, instilled a new fervor into his movements. It was almost like he was frantic to reach the bus station now. But his motions were completely controlled, and he wasn't trapped within the emotional weakness that one would normally fall prey to while in a state of panic. Rather, he was determined. A new determination to clear the storm had set into his spirit, and it was almost like the muscles of his arms and legs were engulfed in flames, even as submerged as they were under the flood. He couldn't dwell on what he saw in those old, sunken eyes, or the horrific sight he'd just seen in front of him in the water. He had to move along. It was the only option.

After whipping his head to and fro and spotting no apparent pathways, nor an end to the fence, he concluded that it must go on for miles, and that the only way to get past it would be to climb over it somehow. It was a daunting task, but not impossible -- after all, he'd scaled higher heights than this, and he'd done it without batting an eyelash. But he'd have to act fast. The rain was only coming down harder, the wind only blowing stronger, faster, and Kamina didn't know how much time he had to waste before he became another piece of meat floating around in this churning, cold, murky soup.

With a grunt, he pulled himself up, higher and higher. His breathing became ragged far before he expected it to, but he wasn't gonna stop now, even for a second. Higher, higher. He took more fence between his fingers and toes, and he soon saw the top of the fence coming into view. The pounding in his head was dying down a little, probably because of the adrenaline rush, but now his chest was burning. All of a sudden, for some reason he couldn't wrap his head around, he was remembering the night before. Or rather, the last events he could remember before the inevitable dark spots opened themselves up like a void, the direct penalty of consuming far too much alcohol in far too short a timespan.

He couldn't remember it all too well; he couldn't remember anything too well. But he knew then and he knew now that Mami hadn't wanted him to go where he had gone last night. He didn't even know why he'd gone there himself. Maybe he just wanted to have a little fun. Maybe he just wanted to let loose for once. Maybe he didn't wanna feel gloomy and depressed, a disposition that she seemed hell-bent on maintaining at all times. Maybe he wanted to not be away from friendship and affection for just one night. Not focus so much on the fact that he'd died and gone to --

He reached the top of the fence, pulling himself into a stiff perch atop the thin metal bar that held the fence together. Then, he then did something dangerous, something he probably shouldn't have done. He let out a cry from the top of his lungs, and jumped into the deep water below. He figured it would be faster this way, not having to climb all the way back down again, but he definitely hadn't counted on colliding with something upon landing.

It was a shoe. A single, empty, abandoned shoe. Small enough to belong to a female.

Part of his brain wanted to tell him that he didn't remember. It wanted to have him believe, even for just a second, that he didn't pay attention to things like the shoes a girl wore, or the impressions her arches would leave in them. But now, he held the shoe in his hand an arm's distance away from his widening eyes and he knew -- he knew and he couldn't tell himself otherwise.

This was Mami's shoe.

"No," the word slipped out of his throat, dry and cracked. "No."

He felt dazed and vulnerable. It was a feeling he hadn't felt in a long time, and most certainly hadn't expected to feel now. It was... It was just impossible. Mami couldn't have been out here -- not out here. She was with the others, on the buses! She was safe, and dry -- she had to be! She was smart. She wasn't like him. She wouldn't go and phone it in out here like this.

"Damn it Mami," he choked on a sob. Please...

The soft white shoe bent under his tightening grip, and he started swimming. How hadn't the bus station been buried, anyway, he wondered? With how deep this water was, they honestly and rightfully should've taken off to safety long ago. That was when he realized. What he had seen coming out of the tavern weren't the lights of buses. There were never any buses here at all. They were cars. Dozens and dozens of cars and trucks, all with their lights on full force to try and brave the storm. And bodies. Thousands of human bodies desperately cramming into them, sinking them to the bottom of the flood with their weight. And just behind that sickening picture, a red light still shone as blindingly as he could remember it shining last night when he'd been looking up at it from below.

Oh, it would take a lot more than eyes and a semi-functioning human brain to process what he'd just seen. He groaned loudly, and blacked out.

Funny. Kamina thought for almost certain that he'd wake up dead.
But once he grew completely conscious, he only thought that he should be so lucky.

Two small hands were pulling him by the waist and he thought with a disgruntled little sigh that he should be the one doing the saving. But he'd failed. He'd went the pansy route and passed out and now someone littler than him was rescuing him. He just hoped it wasn't that kid from earlier again. But that kid was smart, so there was no way in Hell he'd still be here. Then again, he had thought the same thing about Mami...

He shivered under the weight of a pain that was hardly physical, and that was when he noticed what his rescuer was trying to do. He must've gotten snagged on a vehicle at some point after his dramatic fainting spell, and they were trying to get him loose. Stuttering into consciousness, he fumbled to help with the removal of his belt. His clammy hands dragged down his torso lazily en route to his hips, and they found the other person's soft and well-kept hands along the way.

"Mami," he whispered instinctively. Mami?

"You're alive?" He must've been going delirious.

Even so, he felt himself go limp with relief, ready to sleep all over again, but he knew he couldn't. If this really was Mami, then the two of them still weren't exactly out of the fire or the frying pan just yet. He smirked, undoing the knot in his belt quickly. There was minimal resistance, despite the odd way he had to shove his thumb into the knot to get it to untie.

When he finally slid the belt out of its loops, he spoke again. This time, his voice sounded lazy, almost sleepy:

"If y'wanted to get into my pants so bad, you're a little late to the party, aren't ya?" He teased her with a breathy chuckle. "But at least now y'don't have to worry about gettin' me wet." Of course, he may have sounded confident, but his face was a pretty nice shade of red, too.

All of the manliness he'd spent almost eighteen good years building up had seemed to leave him in an instant. But now, it came back.

"Well! Of course I can!"

He fought against the instinct to stammer boyishly, and started pushing and waving her hands away from his sides so he could paddle with his own arms and keep his own damn self afloat. He turned himself around and, finally, glanced at her face; on his features, he wore a rather haughty expression for someone who'd almost bought it in the middle of a torrential storm, but who would he be if he weren't the poster child for elasticity? He would always be the first to bounce back. "Anyhow, you've gotta be awful tired! Sure y'don't need a lift, milady?" He tilted his head toward her with a smile and extended his arm. Soon enough, however, his jovial disposition was replaced by something grim.

"We can't leave here just yet, Mami."

Liquid streamed down his face, consisting of rainwater, sweat, or stray tears -- probably all three -- while he struggled with the words he would say. He hadn't a clue how long he'd been unconscious, truthfully. He hoped it hadn't been long. He hoped he wasn't too late. He shuddered, and silently jerked his head over to his left, making deep eye contact with the blonde right in front of him. "We gotta save those people. We have to, Mami!" His voice sounded desperate. "You saw what happened to all of 'em, right? They're all gonna die if we don't do anything! Mami..." He probably sounded more worried than he should, and he wondered where this kind of empathy was coming from at a time like this. Maybe it was just because he hadn't witnessed this scale of death before. It seemed almost like something that couldn't ever be real, a colossal monster or a saber-toothed demon out of a story book that you knew could never actually exist, could never harm you. But it seemed as if it was as dark as Hell itself out here now -- so, could he really be sure?

"You got any magic left?" He heard his voice continue to work on its own, as if it wasn't his and belonged to somebody else. Some other man. "If you got any at all, please, use it! I'll do what I can, but I need you too! Please! They can't all..." His voice finally broke. He knew it. He knew it the more he spoke. Those people were all already dead. And if they weren't, there was no way that he and Mami could save all of them, was there? They had no mechs, or guns, or tanks. All they had was their spirit.

And spirit had always been enough in the past, but...