Attis. Whereas most other people only wanted information when it was convenient, Attis could actually appreciate knowledge and learning. It pleased Emil to no end, but one day he was gone and everyone was calling him a traitor; no amount of inquiring could get anyone to say what happened to him.

I wish he was still around; I bet he'd help with the library project.

Milos started to leave, but something he'd said caught Emil's attention and sent him after him. "Hey, hey, wait!" He tugged on Milos's shirt urgently, a sign that he was serious, as he normally tried to not to invade the personal space of others. Of course, with Emil serious was relative; even with his brow furrowed in concentration he looked more like a kid trying to imitate seriousness than anything.

"What other leads? Is there more I can learn? Do you know what else Attis was studying?" For once, knowledge's complete disregard for social norms might be endearing; he didn't seem the least bit reluctant to ask about the ideas of a supposed traitor.

Milos was, incidentally, a worse person to antagonize than Toushikyo. He rarely presented himself with much ire; in fact, he was an exceptionally cheery person, but he could dive into seriousness when needed, such as during talks about the Dusk Remnant. Those were sad and seriousness, and his tone always reflected that. However, regarding anything else, he was almost always able to try and act like he was happy, even if it were all a ruse, meant only to make someone feel better. All of this, of course, made Milos seem like the type that could be antagonized or pushed around, but the truth was . . .

Milos could hurt someone. Milos could hurt someone badly. If it were him that stiff-armed Emil in the jaw, Emil would have been without most of his teeth after the fact. Milos looked tiny, frail, and genuinely girlish (in fact, upon first meeting Milos, most people confused him with a fourteen to sixteen year old girl), but he could hurt someone with his bare hands more than any other Memory alive.

The relevance of this might have been questionable were it not for the fact that Milos also had extremely active reflexes. If he were touched or grabbed, he reacted--it was that simple. Instinct told him then to twist around and get his shin up on Emil's face, but Milos instead twitched somewhat as he came to a stop. If he acted on instinct, he'd have killed Emil outright. Fortunately for everyone, unless Milos was explicitly in a dangerous situation, he never let instinct get the best of him.

He turned somewhat to face Emil, acknowledging him with a solemn smile.

"I-- um, yeah, I could tell you about it all, um," Milos went silent for a second; he furrowed his brow, "I need to give Katalyna the news, first. If you come along, we could talk about it afterward."

Actually, that was a bad idea.

"Or, um, er . . . actually . . . could you just meet me at my place instead?" Milos asked awkwardly, "It's open, so . . . you could just walk in and wait for me."

If Emil noticed that Milos had been about to hit him simply on instinct, he didn't show it. The same clueless smile remained plastered to his face. "Okay!" he agreed. "Though, are you sure you don't want me to come with? I did see everything, so I could probably help explain."

He paused for a moment as though waiting for a reply, but then went on anyway. "Well, if you're sure, then I'll be waiting. Don't take too long! I want to continue working in the library as long as I'm back."

And with that he wandered off, and despite never having been there or even being told where it is he'd find Milos's room. Assuming it was unlocked as he said, he'd enter and amuse himself while he waited by examining any books in the room or, if the room was devoid of books, any other objects and see what he could learn from them.

"Y-yeah, I'm sure . . ."

No, really, it was just a bad idea to bring Emil along. He'd do nothing but harm to someone who was already going to be quite harmed. Bluntness and speaking without thinking and all of that mess . . . that wasn't needed when you were delivering the bad news of death to someone, especially if that someone happened to be the deceased's mother. Milos would have been extremely insistent about this had Emil persisted on the subject matter, but much to his relief, Emil was content to just go to Milos's shack and wait for him there.

"Yeah, um, I'll see you." Milos replied awkwardly--and with that, he was off, just as Emil himself had already started in the direction of the unreal city's center.

That was approximately where Milos lived, in the tight collection of buildings near the city center, but not quite at the center itself, for that was reserved for a much larger building-- a gated off place, locked, with no apparent use or population. That place was like a mansion; a multi-part mansion, for that matter, that seemed to occupy a fair one forth of the city. Its gray and white visage matched much of the colorless form of their world.

The place in which Milos lived was nearby, just down the road from the center mansion. It was a small one story shack snug tight between two larger sky kissing complexes, both of which were locked tight. It seemed the only places not locked in the city anymore were ones that were actually inhabited.

Milos's place was small and relatively undecorated. It had a total of three rooms, a living room with an old couch, a bedroom with a single bed, and a small bathroom. The only windows the house had to its form were those on the front of it--approximately two, which were a view out only for the living room. It was of spartan design. The bookshelves in the living room were as barren at the sheets on the bed. The only sign that he lived there are all were his clothes in the dresser; colorful clothes (as it seemed on their bodies and direct belongings actually maintained color in this world) that were all always baggy and made for someone much larger than Milos, yet still with a small enough collar that they fit him as if they were custom made.

At a glance, the small shack was fine. But to look into the bathroom and upon the sink, Emil might find a rather extraordinary find--at least, something he might consider such. They were knives; extremely sharp, thick knives, approximately five of them, strewn about the bathroom sink with a set of bandage gauze on the back of the sink, all of which was completely clean. The mirror just above the sink was clean, too, but not undamaged. In the bottom right hand corner, a circular indentation extended a spiderweb of cracks throughout the lower half of the mirror, making it somewhat difficult to see oneself in.

Milos's house was in an odd place, an easy place to overlook--a place that would have been difficult for many to find if they didn't know what to look for. Fortunately, Emil always knew what to look for, and never got lost, so this wasn't a problem.

There were too problems with the house, though. The first was that Milos didn't seem to be much of a reader, so he didn't have any books for Emil to pass the time with. The other was that it seemed Milos moved in relatively recently, and so there was little Emil could learn simply from looking around.

Two things interested him, though, both of which were in the bathroom. The first was the mirror, which was cracked to the point where the mirror was virtually unusable; at a glance it seemed as though someone had punched it, which seemed like a bad idea until he remembered how tough Milos was sometimes. He carefully traced some of the cracks with his fingers, trying to figure out what made them, and why.

The other thing that drew his attention were the knives on the sink. Knives were usually stored in the kitchen, not left out like this. He couldn't think of any reason why anyone would need one knife in the bathroom, let alone five. He picked one up and examined it, wondering what it was doing there...

There were two images-- two distinct images and actions that alone made very little sense, but together, made a kind of sense that anyone but Emil would have wished never to see.



Milos stared at himself for some time in the mirror. His hair was down, taken out of clips and ties, and party hanging before his eyes. He wore no shirt. He wore no clothes at all. In the mirror, he could see only from his belly up. Beyond the hair on his head, he hadn't a single hair of masculine property upon his body. His skin was pristine and uncannily soft. Between his ribs and hips, his body had, in a subtle way, a curve otherwise regarded as feminine. Despite his outward appearance and almost sickly skinniness, however, the lines of his muscles were clearly visible--toned yet . . . adolescent in figure.

He lifted his right arm, and behind a veil of bangs, stared at his wrist. It looked so soft, so fleshy, so shallow-- so simple, so easy, so quick to reach an important artery--

Milos rose his left hand, a knife meant for nothing less than battle loose in his hand. For a long time, he continued to stare at his wrist-- not wondering if he'd be missed, but wondering if what come next was really worth it.

Clearly, he made his decision. As soon as his left hand twitched, he hesitated no longer; Milos tipped the blade forward, its dagger end to his soft and flesh wrist, and plunged it forward. The tip met his skin, jabbed hard, but stopped short. He dragged it down, ran the blade's edge down the softness of his arm, dipped at the wrist, pushed, and dragged down with no thought of regret--

And yet, there was denial-- denial in every way. By the time Milos tore the blade down to his elbow, he found no trace of blood. He'd stabbed, pushed, and pulled, but he found nothing. He tightened his hand into a fist, believing that the cuts were too shallow but would bleed with pressure-- and still, there was nothing-- nothing more than soft flesh, untouched by a blade's edge.

So he tried again.

And again.

And again.

Soft dragging became forceful smearing, intensive stabbing became wild flailing. He sliced and stabbed and sliced and stabbed, forward, straight, across, up, down, every feasible direction; he put his shoulder into it; he put both hands to work; he drove the blade with one and rose the other to meet it, each with the most force available, each attempt failing equally. No matter the amount of his tries, Milos drew no blood; he took no life.

In frustration, the blade was thrown into the sink. He hunched forward, leaned over the sink, and stared down into it as tears of frustration welled up in his eyes. He looked up, only to discover his face so close to the mirror, his face so close to his face-- another face, with lips he wished could draw no further breath. The pale green of his eyes stared into the hazy green of the reflection's, lost in a trance from which he could barely withdraw.

After the third minute, his upper lip rose in a quiet snarl in loathing of the image before him; he lifted his hands, threw them through his hair and held back the urge to cry. He twitched and shook and finally dropped his hands, drew back, and let out a desperate cry. With all the force he could muster, he plunged his face into the bottom of the mirror, struck it forehead first, and with his bare feet planted upon the floor, pushed forward.

He held his forehead upon the glass for as long as he could. He dug in with his neck, twisted back and forth, and tried to dig the glass in as far as he possibly could--tried to scar or maim or cut or draw blood in any way. It didn't matter how. So desperately, he wanted to know that he could bleed.

When he pulled back, glass flecked from his skull and the mirror; dashes of reflection danced from his forehead and flaked into the drain.

There was no blood upon the mirror. Glass freckled upon his forehead, but no matter how long Milos stared at it, he could find no scarlet there. Tears welled up in his dry and burning eyes and his lips parted in a display of emotional pain as he could hold back the need to cry no longer. As bitter droplets lined his cheekbones, he lowered her skull to the sink's edge. He screamed, first; the first he'd let it out-- he screamed as loud as he could, gasped, and gave into the sobs. Milos dropped to his knees, holding onto the sink with his arms to keep him from a full collapse-- as he cried, harder now-- bawled --as even he could not take his own life, not for lack of will, but the pure physical inability . . .



There was, however, something else. The owner of those knives . . . Emil might recognize him-- a distant and faded memory-- so close, yet so disjointed and broken--



. . . .

"R-Recheov!"

"What are you doing?!"

. . . .

"P-please, Recheov-- don't do this. We don't want to fight you!"




It was as Emil examined the knives closely that the front door slowly opened. It shut in lethargic succession, and in the living room, there was a long pause. Emil, in concentration, might not even realize that he wasn't alone in the house anymore, not until someone spoke up:

"What are you doing?"

While anyone else may have been disturbed to know what he gleamed from the mirror, to Emil all knowledge was valuable, and that included knowledge about others no matter how dark that knowledge may be. He could no more reject it than he could reject his own being.

What he examined from the knives was decidedly more intriguing, though; it hinted at an event, a fracture, something that happened that directly resulted in the situation as it was now, why the Dusk Remnant was in the Reaper's hands and not in Memoria.

If Emil was at all surprised or startled by Milos's question, he didn't show it, nor did he seem bothered by being caught at what he was doing. In truth it didn't occur to him that he might be doing something wrong. "Learning," he replied honestly; it was what he always did.

Unfortunately, certain things that were objectively bad ideas to others were not always seen the same way by Emil, which was the only way to explain what he said next. "Why do you want to kill yourself, Milos?" he asked. He didn't sound upset or worried so much as puzzled. "It seems strange to me, seeing as most other Memories are striving to increase our lifespan."

For a moment there, Milos leveled a disapproving glare at Emil. He didn't answer his question; he hadn't the want to, nor did he feel as if he had to. He might have invited Emil to his house to discuss other ideas and theories Attis had, but that didn't mean Emil was suddenly allowed to rummage through his house. That would've been horrible even if Milos were there. The boy started towards Emil, still refusing to acknowledge the question he'd been asked, and didn't hesitate in the slightest when he reached him:

Milos snatched the knife out of Emil's hand. He snatched it by the blade with little care for the safety of his fingers and palm, and with good reason: he might have held onto it tight for a split second, but it drew no blood, nor induced even the smallest amount of pain.

It would've been nice, for him-- if this blade could give him the slightest amount of pain, but in the end, he'd not a physical feeling left in his body. Any and all pain he could feel was purely emotional. Milos averted his eyes from Emil as soon as he'd reclaimed the blade.

"It's rude to touch other people's things," Milos declared at last, his voice shaky, but trying to find some sort of stern tone, whilst he dropped the knife into the sink with the others.

He cocked his head to the side, confused but for once he didn't ask why. He'd heard similar things before from others, but he didn't really understand it. If he didn't break anything or dirty it, what was the problem? But no one else seemed to think that way, and he knew he wouldn't get a satisfactory answer even if he asked.

And since Milos certainly wasn't going to answer his question (which would be a shame, as he felt if he did it would be very enlightening), or respond in any meaningful way if he asked about what he learned from the knives, he instead went back to why he'd been invited there in the first place.

"So, what's this research you mentioned?" he asked. Milos made it sound like there were other ways that Memories might extend their lifespan, which if true was knowledge that could not afford to be lost! And though he really wanted another chance to study the Dusk Remnant--he felt like he'd barely scratched the surface of it--he was forced to admit that at the moment there seemed to be no good way to retrieve it.

Milos eyed Emil for a moment, half tempted to ask him to leave--but then he remembered the circumstances, and that if he asked Emil to leave, he'd probably just wind up pursuing the Dusk Remnant again, and so would others, and there'd be even less people populating their gray city.

"Attis had . . . I don't know, dozens of plans. But knowing you people, they're all burned up by now. Everyone just wants the Dusk Remnant; they don't even both to look at the safer stuff at all!" Milos declared in introduction, one he felt just a little too passionate about.

He sighed. Emil didn't understand emotions or why people felt the way they felt, but he'd probably be able to figure out by now that when it came to the Dusk Remnant, Milos was extremely bitter.

"C-come over here, please," he interrupted before he got in too far; Milos didn't want Emil in his bathroom anymore. He motioned for him to come back into the living room and take a seat or something. He just needed to be somewhere that didn't make Milos feel nervous, that's all.

"Before he found the Dusk Remnant, Attis a-and . . . and all of us, really . . . back when Dyss and Recheov were still around, too," Milos sighed again; maybe he was a little more bitter than he realized, "W-we were all researching Qi Displacement. Y-you haven't heard of it at all, have you?"

The possibility made Milos frown.

Emil frowned at Milos, looking--for once--actually offended at something said to him. "I would never burn research; all knowledge is valuable." If he'd known anything about any research Attis had done, he would have already looked into it to the extent of his abilities.

For several long moments Emil searched his memory before a look of surprise crossed his. "No, I've never heard of it," he responded at last.

"The name makes it sound like it involves the movement of Qi...but as the result of something else?" he guessed. He was trying figure out as much about it as he could.

Milos rolled his shoulders slightly. He kind of figured Emil would've never heard the term before; these were all findings of Attis personally--things he was explicitly keeping from everyone but them, Milos, Dyss, Recheov, and Illorex. Milos figured, then, that Illorex must never have told anyone. Milos stood before the couch, before Emil, and narrated:

"A Spirit Flux causes Qi Displacement," Milos stated as if he weren't using his own words.

No, of course he wasn't speaking in his own words. Sure, it was his tone of voice, but Milos didn't really understand this stuff as much as Attis did--as much as Emil probably would. He understood it enough to know the basics and why it wasn't risky at all, but not nearly enough to feel proficient in the subject.

"A Spirit Flux is when the Qi of a place, l-like, um, like a city, you know? It's when the total of the place's spiritual energy just spikes. Then, wh-where that place is in our world catches up. Attis found th-that, ummm . . ." this was the real technical part, "That when a place in the real world is spiked, the same place in the unreal world slowly catches up. Displacement happens wh-whenever there's a spike-- b-because the world's spirit moves on its own, a-and for one place to spike, another place has to lose."

Milos paused to see if Emil was getting all this, first and foremost.

"Makes sense." There was a pause while Emil furrowed his brow in thought, giving him an almost comically serious expression. But even for him this was a difficult subject; sadly, knowledge and understanding were sometimes two different things, as evidenced by much of social interaction. He knew what was considered normal, but he didn't understand why it was that way and why he should act like that himself.

Still, he was smarter than he seemed. "I think I see. We need Qi to become real. We can't take Qi from the real world, because it attracts too much attention and by the time we'd react the top of the spike would have passed. But...if the Qi in our world starts to catch up to the spike, then in if we identify where the Qi is spiking in the real world and go to the equivalent in our world, then we can get there in time for it to spike in our world. And it should draw less attention that way."

He looked back at Milos, excitement shining in his eyes. "Am I close?" His mind was already abuzz with ideas, wondering what he would need to test such a theory.

"Almost," Milos replied.

He lifted his hand, index finger out as if he were going to make a grand point; he opened his mouth, then he stopped. Milos couldn't explain this in any grandiose way; that was for Attis, and Attis wasn't here.

"I-if we were to take a lot from the real world just . . . just willy nilly, we'd attract attention," Milos corrected, "B-but if there's a place in the real world going through a flux, a-and our world is slowly catching up to it, w-we can harvest Qi from there in the real world; o-our world will catch up t-to what we've leveled off a-and the Flux will stop, a-and th-the place that's displaced w-will go back to normal."

"Don't you see? I-it might take a little longer, but working with the Fluxes helps us and them!"

It was at that moment that Milos stopped.

Funny.

Saying that in such a way . . . an exclamation, uttered in an almost desperate way, as if it were a last ditch effort to convince some-- saying it that way just felt so . . . so . . . familiar.

"Aha! The theory remains the same though: by only taking when there's a flux, there's no way to tell when we're taking the Qi--it would just seem like a less powerful flux to anyone monitoring it." It was a very intriguing idea, to be sure.

"At the rate progress with the Dust Remnant is going, that method may well go quicker," he observed cheerfully. "The Reaper is scary strong; we'll have to rethink our strategy if we want to try for it again." Even a failed experiment still produced valuable data, and that was how he saw it. The Terra clan suffered the loss of over half its members, but he figured it was unlikely anyone would try and challenge the Reaper again soon. After all, he didn't know too many people who could claim to be stronger than Gestahl.

"So, the question would be how to detect the fluctuations and how to gather the Qi." Many Memories didn't even know what Qi was, let alone were able to use it. The ability to manipulate it was definitive of Reapers, but Memories drew on different sources for their abilities.