To: @morphogenetic

From: @chessanator

I’ve cooked up a little bit of Carlos/Junpei for you this Christmas. Even though it’s probably a bit more platonic and a hell of a lot less fluffy than you were were imagining, I hope you enjoy it.
I decided to spice it up with the spirit of your first prompt as well, by setting it between games: of course, there’s only one pair of games that Carlos/Junpei can be between.
Finally, since it fits, I decided to throw in a little head-canon that I think really binds the whole thing together. I hope you appreciate it, and have a Merry Christmas.

“I need you to forget, Junpei.”

Junpei fell to the cold steel floor of the elevator that had carried them out of the bunker, clawing at his thigh and the needles of the bracelet that had been forced into it. For just a moment he reached out his arm towards Akane – the woman whose bracelet it was and who had used it against him – before even that fell still.

Akane took a deep, sorrowful breath. “I do what I must to accomplish my goals. That is just how I am,” she announced. Her right hand shook slightly, and the ring on her finger with it.

Carlos stumbled back, his hands raised warily. “Whoa, Akane… Hold on! What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, Carlos,” Akane said, “You get to keep your memories. I still need someone to look after Junpei when he wakes up.”

“Look… after him?” Carlos asked.

“He won’t remember anything about the Decision Game,” Akane explained, “He won’t remember much from D-Com, either. And he won’t remember Radical-6. You heard what we told you. That virus will spread across the entire world, killing everyone it touches. Junpei… Junpei has to survive.” The ring on Akane’s finger twitched again. “You need to help him, Carlos. You need to make sure he lives.”

“Wait! I…” Carlos started to say.

Akane scribbled something on a scrap of paper and tossed it to Carlos. A quick glance showed it to be a set of GPS coordinates. “There’s a shelter, south and east of here,” Akane said, “I had it prepared beforehand, just in case. It’s got everything Junpei and you will need to get through this. It’s all yours.”

“No!” Carlos shouted. His fist clenched. “I can’t do this. I have to get back to New York. I have to make sure that Maria’s okay!”

Akane turned her face away. “I thought you might say that, Carlos. I understand why you’d want to look after your sister. But I think… I think that if you really wanted to ensure that Maria’s okay… you’d go with Junpei. And you wouldn’t tell him that I was ever here.”

Carlos shivered. The meaning of Akane’s words sunk into him. “Akane… You wouldn’t… I thought I knew you!”

“I do what I must to accomplish my goals.” Akane turned away and started walking into the desert. Still, her voice carried back to Carlos, cutting across the gently blowing wind, and the last thing she said was, “Don’t worry. It’s not forever. Eventually, the worst possible thing will happen. After that, you’re free to do what you want.”

Akane disappeared into the dunes. Carlos sunk to his knees.

Junpei was awoken by the sound of a blaring siren. From the vibrations of the seat he was sitting in, he realised he was in a vehicle moving at speed. Snuggled in his lap was an elderly but vibrantly healthy terrier; his collar called him, ‘Gab’.

“Junpei, you’re awake!” came a voice from Junpei’s left.

Junpei looked over at the driver. He was an angular-jawed blond-haired man, wearing a fireman’s suit. That made sense: they were in a fire-truck. Nothing else did: Junpei was sure he was supposed to be heading for the Mars Mission test site to find Akane. That shouldn’t have involved ending up in a fire-engine.

Then, an idea popped into Junpei’s mind. “You’re one of the Mars Mission participants, aren’t you?”

The man nodded. “That’s right. Well, I was one.” He paused. “You don’t remember much else about me, right? I’m Carlos. I guess that, for you, this is the first time that you’ve met me.”

Junpei listened as the man – Carlos – described how the Mars Mission experiment had been hijacked by some terrorist group, who had used it to release a dangerous virus called Radical-6 into the world. According to Carlos, there was now no way to stop it spreading. “It was Free the Soul who did this, wasn’t it? Of course it was. I knew something like this was going to happen,” Junpei stated.

“You’ve heard of them?” Carlos asked, “I didn’t know they existed until today.”

Junpei nodded. Then, he asked the question that was weighing on his shoulders. “I joined the Mars Mission experiment hoping to meet someone. Someone I haven’t seen for a long time. Did you see her? Akane Kurashiki?”

Carlos didn’t answer at first. He looked at the road; he changed gears. Finally, he shook his head. “She wasn’t there.”

Junpei sat in silence for a few minutes. Then, he asked, “Where are we going?”

“We need somewhere to weather out the Radical-6 outbreak,” Carlos said. He paused for a couple of seconds. “Someone… someone told me about a shelter. That’s where we are going.”

The rest of the journey passed in silence, save for the screaming of the siren that sped the fire-engine along. Eventually, they arrived at the shelter that Carlos was talking about. It lay within sight of the Colorado River, just off a harbour where several small boats were tied to a pier. Pieces of corrugated metal and rough-cut lumber were piled around the central structure: a small steel mound poking out from the structure concealed beneath the surface. Only a bulky hatch allowed access.

“We should go in and have a look around,” Carlos said.

The hatch opened, though only with considerable effort from both Junpei and Carlos, and they began to explore the inside. The shelter went deep below the ground, intended to house several hundreds of people rather than just two. Alongside the many floors of bedrooms and living spaces, there were also other facilities: a walk-in freezer filled with canned foods, a large bay of hydroponics tanks, an engineering workshop equipped with power tools and 3-D printers and, near the bottom of the shelter, the nuclear reactor that powered the whole thing.

But most ominous of all was the medical centre, since Junpei and Carlos found there kits which could test for Radical-6 infection.

“They knew this was coming,” Carlos muttered, “and they were planning for the long term.”

Junpei turned towards him. “Who told you about this place?” he asked sternly.

Carlos looked away. “It was… one of the other Mars Mission participants,” he replied.

“Then why aren’t they here with us?!”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what they were thinking.” Carlos fell silent for about a minute. Then, he said, “Let’s head somewhere else. There has to be something here to take our minds off this.”

Junpei and Carlos headed back up the underground shelter, finding a common room tucked among the residential area. It had a bar, reasonably well stocked with spirits. It also had a television. Carlos turned it on, and as it blared to life the news started to play.

“Valley Hospital, Las Vegas, was thrown into chaos when fifty doctors, nurses and medical technicians threw themselves from the roof. Witnesses described the mass suicide as ‘grisly’, ‘catastrophic’ and ‘unimaginable’. We turn to our reporter on the scene for more information.”

“We’re here on Pinto Lane, Las Vegas, just outside the cordon the police have set up. People here are… just completely shocked. They haven’t seen anything like this before; I can certainly say I haven’t. Even from this distance, we can see some of the results of this horrifying event, as the coroners try to identify and respectfully remove the bodies. I’ve been talking to some of the grieving families as they’ve come to identify their loved ones. Almost universally, the victims were described as happy and contents, with much to live for. No-one knows what drove these poor people to such a final decision, and I don’t think anyone ever will be able to understand. Still, hearing about these bright young people choosing to end it all, you have to wonder if they knew something we didn’t.”

Junpei slammed the television off. He was shaking. He shook even as he fell into the armchair that Carlos had moved up behind him. “It’s really happening,” Junpei whispered.

Carlos knelt down next to Junpei and held his hand, squeezing it until Junpei’s shaking stopped. “I’m sorry, Junpei.”

“I was sure you were lying,” Junpei said, “I was waiting until I felt better to get the drop on you and run away, but… the world really is ending. We really are just stuck here.”

“I didn’t believe it myself when you… when I first found out,” Carlos answered.

Junpei sat there silently for several minutes. He felt as though he would never come to terms with what had happened. But eventually, even that feeling passed. He sighed. “Well, since we’re stuck together: nice to meet you, Carlos. I guess I could enjoy coming to get to know you.”

Carlos and Junpei talked into the late hours of the night, though the uniform harsh lights of the shelter obscured the actual time. Junpei told Carlos about Akane, and how he’d spent an entire year trying to find her again. Carlos told Junpei about his sister, Maria, and the efforts he had taken to earn the money needed to cure her Reverie Syndrome.

Eventually, their tiredness overcame even their despair. Junpei and Carlos found a place for Gab to sleep, and then choose adjacent bedrooms for themselves and went to sleep as well.

Junpei had a nightmare that night. In it, he saw Akane. He watched, paralysed, as she appeared to stab a dagger into her own chest. But then the dream shifted, and the heart that the dagger had been driven into was Junpei’s own.

As Radical-6 spread across the world, rumours spread as well: rumours of a place untouched by the fires that had ravaged everything else. And so people started to approach the shelter that Carlos and Junpei had made their home.

Carlos was ready for them, as much as he could be. He’d extracted the radio from his fire-truck so that they could use it to communicate with the incoming people and the rest of the outside world. He’d also jury-rigged his turn-out gear so that they would hopefully protect from Radical-6 as well as heat and smoke. Wearing them, Junpei and he could intercept the refugees, and hand them the Radial-6 testing kits. About two thirds of the people who found the shelter were clean and welcomed inside.

But the people Carlos had gone out to meet that day were not.

Being rejected from the shelter was usually the last straw for those who were infected with Radical-6. Carlos had seen it before: people succumbing to suicide only shortly after turning away. This group was worse though, and not only because they had done it right in front of him. The woman Carlos had rejected had shot her two infant children before turning the gun on herself. Even that wasn’t the end, though. The bodies were still out there, and still infected. They were still there as a danger to other people trying to find the shelter. Carlos needed to decontaminate them before his job was done.

As Carlos dropped the match onto the pyre, he crossed himself. “I’m supposed to be saving people from fires,” he muttered as a bitter prayer, “not burning them myself.”

Junpei also wearing the modified protective gear, came up behind Carlos and grasped him firmly by the shoulder. “I can finish it off. Go back inside.”

Carlos shrugged him off. “No. I need to see this through. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t.” He looked down at the charring bodies once more. “It’s just…”

Junpei grabbed Carlos again and spun him around with surprising force. “Listen, Carlos! We are saving people. There’s about a hundred people back there who wouldn’t be alive without us. And if we let a single infected person through, all of them die. All of them. We have to do this!”

Carlos just stood there, glumly silent. Junpei studied his face intently, before continuing to speak.

“You’re feeling guilty about something else, aren’t you? Something other than the people we have to turn away. I could be deaf and blind and still realise that.”

Carlos clenched his fist and ground his teeth. He couldn’t let Junpei know about the other thing that was worrying him. It was the lie that had brought them to the shelter, and the whole thing would fall apart if it ever got out.

“It’s about Maria, right?” Junpei asked.

Carlos could at least talk about that. “Yeah. Yes, that’s right.” He fell silent again.

Junpei nodded. “I always wondered why you’d stayed here rather than go look for her. How come?”

Carlos sighed, buying time for another white lie. “It was too far. I didn’t know how far the virus had spread when I picked you up. If I’d caught it on the way there, if I infected her with it…”

“Okay, okay!” Junpei shushed him, “There’s no need to get completely morbid. Let’s get back inside, before you get any worse.” He looked over at the flames sprouting above the pyre. “That’s done, anyway. There’s no way any Radical-6 survived that.”

Carlos nodded, and returned with Junpei to the hatch.

Carlos had a nightmare that night. In it, he saw both Maria and Junpei hanging from cliffs on opposite sides of a lake filled with poison, filled with Radical-6. In the dream his heart was filled with a dreadful certainty: he’d only be able to save one of them, and not the other.

On April 13^th, Junpei was woken by a voice calling his name.

“Junpei! Junpei! You need to get up here!” The voice was Emily’s. She had been one of the first – first uninfected – people to arrive at the shelter after Junpei and Carlos, and she often ended up taking the leadership role when they weren’t able to. With the shelter housing eight hundred people and nearly full, there was no way Carlos and Junpei could do everything anymore.

“What is it?” Junpei called back groggily, “Can’t it wait until later?”

“The radio’s receiving a signal!” Emily explained, “It’s quite weak, so we took it to the surface to pick it up better.”

“Well then: listen to what it says and tell me later!” Junpei fell quickly back to sleep.

He was immediately woken up again. “We can’t! Whoever it is, they’re speaking Japanese!”

“Goddamnit, okay then! I’m coming!”

When Junpei was awake and dressed and Emily had dragged him up to the surface, he saw, through the dim light of the dawn that Carlos was already up there, sitting in the centre of a crowd of people with the radio. Gab was also out there, nuzzling the back of Carlos’ hand. No-one was wearing protective suits: they hadn’t seen anyone approach for a while, and they had set up a perimeter of electronic sensors to warn of anyone coming. As long as they weren’t close to anyone infected, there was no danger of Radical-6.

Carlos spotted Junpei’s arrival. “I’m glad to see you back among the living. What do you make of this?”

Junpei joined Carlos in the centre of the circle. He listened to the words coming through the radio, and began to translate for the others at the start of the next sentence.

“It has thus become clear that the factor that has continually frustrated our efforts to eradicate Radical-6 is the population of wild animals, which harbours the virus and reintroduces it after each quarantine attempt. It has also become clear that merely killing the wildlife on the edges of the remaining pockets of human civilisation is not enough. Thus, we have chosen to implement a more thorough solution that will eradicate Radical-6 for good.

“We here at the Hokkaido Antimatter Reactor, as well as our esteemed colleagues around the world, wish the rest of humanity the best of luck. We hope you think well of us once we are gone.” The radio played one more word that everyone understood – “Sayonara” – and then fell silent.

“Huh?” Emily piped up, “What did it mean, ‘a more thorough…’?”

Her voice cut off. Lights flashed into being among the twilight of the dawn: three to the north, one to the south, one just visible over the western horizon. They were mere pinpricks, but impossibly bright.

“Oh,” Junpei gasped softly, “Oh no.”

Carlos leapt to his feet. “Everyone!” he yelled, his voice an urgent command, “Everyone, get back in the shelter! Now! Go, go, go!”

People hesitated for a moment. They hadn’t understood as quickly as Junpei or Carlos had. But Carlos was trained for emergencies, and used to people’s vacillation during them. His sheer presence got people moving, until a confused and scared but somewhat-organised crowd was racing towards the shelter. Junpei joined them, scooping up Gab and the radio as he did so.

Despite having been at the back of the crowd to make sure everyone was coming, Carlos reached the hatch first. He wrenched it open single-handedly, but didn’t go down; instead, he stood astride the hole, helping others down. His movements settled into a powerful, mechanical rhythm: take a hand, hoist the person up, guide them to the ladder inside, back for the next person.

Junpei was last in the queue. “Take Gab and get down there,” he shouted as he held the terrified dog up, “I’ll follow you.”

Carlos just pulled Junpei up by the shoulder. “No. I promised to myself I’d put everyone else first, especially you. It’s the only way I’d…” Carlos trailed off as he dangled Junpei down the hole.

Junpei tried to stand on the ladder; with his arms full he failed. “I can’t do it!” he yelled up incoherently.

Carlos looked down. “Don’t worry, Junpei. I…” Carlos looked up. He gasped, sharply.

Junpei fell.

A couple of people caught him as he reached the bottom, but the shock of the landing still forced a jolt of pain through Junpei’s nerves. Gab yelped, diving away into Emily’s arms.

Junpei craned his neck up. “Carlos! What the hell?!”

There was a brief flash of light piercing through the gap around the rim of the closing hatch.

Carlos fell. He tumbled as his foot caught a rung of the ladder, spinning through the air until he hit the ground on his left hand side with a sickening crunch.

“Carlos!” Junpei scrambled over, ignoring the pain in his own body. “Goddamnit! What happened?! I thought you were following me in.”

“I followed you in pretty quickly, quickly as possible. Fell really quickly” Carlos mumbled, “Got the hatch closed on my way down.”

“Did you get down in time?!” Junpei roared, trying to keep Carlos awake, “Please tell me that didn’t hit you!”

Carlos still seemed delirious. “That’s what she said. ‘Eventually, the worst possible thing will happen.’ That’s when she said I should stop worrying. Stop worrying about Maria.” Carlos’ voice trailed off. His eyes closed.

Junpei stood up and turned back to face the waiting crowd. His voice trembled. “Get Carlos to the medbay. Someone! Please!” Junpei sighed with relief as Carlos was carried safely away. But even then, he wondered about what his friend had said in those final moments.

Junpei found out later that Carlos hadn’t escaped the blast in time: not quite. His right hand had erupted with a weeping red welt from where it had just been caught as it grabbed the rim of the hatch.

That night, and many others after, Junpei dreamed. They were the dreams of an Esper. Junpei saw another reactor, vivid in his mind because it had also exploded. He saw the cruel plague-doctor who had called himself Zero II and listened as he said the phrase, ‘Vive Hodie.’ Then, Junpei found himself lying in a foreboding chrysalis of alien technology, alongside Akane. The last thing Junpei heard each night before waking up – backlit by the explosions of eighteen annihilation reactors and a blood-red sky – were Akane’s words.

“I need you to forget, Junpei.”

Carlos lay in the infirmary, testing the strength of his injured right hand. According to the doctors, it had been two months since he had burned it and fallen, of which he’d spent all but a single week asleep. The fires that the exploding antimatter reactors had lit were mostly dying out, and it was once again safe to go outside as long as you were in a protective suit. Not that Carlos would be going outside himself: with his burn he would be a liability.

Carlos wanted to become useful again, which was why he spent every morning exercising his fingers and breaking through the pain.

On Carlos’ forty-ninth repetition, Junpei walked in. He march was stiff and irregular, but he still made quick forward progress, stopping about an arm’s length from the side of Carlos’ bed. He didn’t say anything, but just stared.

Carlos relaxed his hand and sat up, resting his back against the pillows. “Hey! Junpei! Good to see you! I thought you had forgotten me down here.”

“‘Forgotten,’” Junpei muttered, “Right… ‘forgotten.’”

Carlos continued to talk. “Anything important happened since then? I remember the plumbing was playing up before, but it has to be fixed by now. I’m still getting decent lunches, even for hospital food, so there can’t be anything wrong with Hydroponics. What about the reactor?”

Junpei glowered. “Carlos. We need to talk.”

“Junpei, what’s up?” Carlos chuckled weakly. “This is because I dropped you, isn’t it? I’m sorry about that.”

“Shut up!”

Junpei’s fist swung round, catching Carlos on his left cheek. Carlos was dazed for a moment as the back of his head clanged against the wall. Everyone in the medbay fell silent.

But Junpei didn’t. “You took Akane from me, you bastard! You don’t get to make jokes about that.”

Carlos froze. “You… you remembered.”

“I remember enough,” Junpei growled, “I remember how I met you, for the real first time, in D-Com. I remember that I finally found Akane there as well. And I remember how you helped her erase my memories so that I’d never know how close I’d come.”

“I didn’t erase your memories!” Carlos protested, “She did that by…”

“You lied to me, afterwards,” Junpei interrupted, “You kept me from looking for her. That’s as good as a complete betrayal. I’ve got the feeling you got a bit of experience with them back during the simulation.” Junpei looked away from Carlos in disgust. “You know… I had thought you’d brought me here because you were my friend. Should have guessed that the only reason you’d pretend to be such a good buddy was because she… because someone was threatening your precious Maria.”

Carlos tried to punch back against Junpei’s snide dismissal of his sister, but could only yelp as pain shot through his right hand. When the pain subsided, he asked, “How do you even know about that? You were unconscious when Akane threatened her.”

Junpei flinched at Akane’s name, but still answered. “How do I know? You talk. In your sleep.”

They glared at each other with silent anger for several minutes: Junpei standing tensely, Carlos leaning his head wearily against the wall. The other residents of the shelter – doctors and patients both – just watched: none of them wanted to get between the founders of the shelter. Eventually, Carlos worked up the strength of will to break the impasse.

“So, you found out. What now, Junpei?” he asked.

Junpei rested his forehead against his left palm, clawing at his hair with frustration. When he had an answer, he spoke. “Now you go.”

“‘Go’?”

“Go! Leave! Never come back!” Junpei roared, “That was the idea, wasn’t it? You babysit me for four months, and now that the world’s ended you get to leave and look for Maria, which is what you really wanted to do all the time you were here. Right?”

“Junpei, I…” Carlos stuttered. He wanted both. Not just to save Maria, unlikely as that was now, but also to be part of the community that Junpei and he had started. He wanted to survive the end of the world with Junpei. Carlos didn’t understand why Junpei couldn’t see that.

“Stop lying to me,” Junpei said, cutting off Carlos’ thoughts. He pointed upwards. “You can take your fire-engine out of here. I don’t want any more things left around to remind me of… people I’ve lost. Don’t worry: it still works. I checked it myself.”

In solemn silence, Junpei escorted Carlos out of the infirmary, to the elevator, to the changing room where the protective suits were stored and – once they both wore those suits – all the way to the ladder and the hatch to the outside world. With only three usable limbs, it took Carlos a while to climb, but he managed it, stepping for the first time under the red sky of the cruel new world.

When Carlos had sat down in the driver’s seat of the fire-truck, he looked forlornly back at Junpei. “I’m gonna miss you, Junpei. Are you really sure you want me to go?”

Junpei bowed his head. “I… I wish you had been who I thought you were, Carlos. But… I…” Junpei’s arms shook; Carlos could see how conflicted he was in his eyes. But eventually Junpei made his final decision. He slammed the truck’s door shut and ran back towards the shelter.

Carlos started the truck’s engine after a couple of spluttering whirs. The siren came to life, its wail forlornly quiet after the battering the ruck had taken. With one last look in the wing mirror Carlos started to drive, wondering if it could possibly have gone any other way.

Junpei regretted sending Carlos away from the moment he stepped back inside the shelter. He regretted everything he had said, but couldn’t even excuse himself by saying it was in the heat of the moment. There wasn’t even a way to call Carlos back and apologise: the radio that should have been in Carlos’ truck had been ripped from it.

Casting his protective suit aside, Junpei made his way back to the common room – the same one he and Carlos had talked in on their very first day. There were some people there, but one withering look from Junpei quickly emptied it.

Junpei turned on the television. It just showed static now: static matching that which buzzed and rumbled in Junpei’s mind. He looked over at the bar. It had started to look very welcoming. It was a way to forget what he had done because he had forgot.

One year later, Gab’s funeral was held. Junpei was drunk during it and didn’t remember a thing.

Six years after that, it was determined that the outside world was truly safe to return to, even without protection. Many of the inhabitants of the shelter started choosing to live outside, in whatever housing they could construct, and a small town formed around Junpei as he stayed still. With Carlos gone and Junpei indisposed, Emily became the de-facto leader and – while it was Junpei who named the town in a small moment of lucidity – it was Emily who most people knew as the first mayor of Fire’s End.

By the time the shelter’s stocks of alcohol had run dry, the town of Fire’s End had made contact with another community of survivors in Tennessee, and traders were bringing more whiskey into the town. Junpei welcomed its arrival, but he wasn’t the only one who needed it in the wake of the end of the world. The whiskey was expensive, even with the small gifts and discounts he got from those who had been there at the beginning and who remembered their respect for him.

Junpei joined the crews who drove west to the ruins of Las Vegas to scavenge. Despite his alcoholic haze, he found he had some talent for it, finding ways to extract useful electronic components from the derelict gambling machines without damaging them at all. Eventually, Junpei started going there alone. He was bringing back as much alone as any entire crew and becoming wealthy despite his spending, and the others preferred to work without his misery.

And then came Christmas Day, 2064. Fire’s End had swelled to about eight thousand people and the celebrations were starting, such as they were. But for once, Junpei was sober. Something inside him told him that it was not the day for that.

He was exploring the shelter – for nostalgia’s sake – when he came across a console whose lights were blinking furiously. It took him a while to recall what it had been used for, thirty-five years ago. Eventually, he remembered. It was connected to the perimeter sensors that he and Carlos had used when it had only been them. One of them, well away from the main trade routes, had activated.

Junpei could have ignored it. He could have told anyone else and then left it to them. But the same feeling inside told Junpei that it had to be him.

He took one of the protective suits, just in case. He chose the second converted fire-suit – the only one left after Carlos had left with the other – even though it wasn’t the closest. And then he left the shelter and made his way to the border of the town.

Junpei climbed a hill a stood there, looking over the desert in the direction that the sensor was located. For a moment, there didn’t seem to be anything out there, and Junpei almost turned back. But then, he saw it.

A blue light, twinkling like a star, glided across the horizon. It travelled across Junpei’s field of view before slowing to a halt. Forcing his aching legs forward, Junpei headed towards the location marked by where the blue star had come to rest.

As Junpei came closer, the source of the light formed in his sight like a mirage. It was a large red vehicle: a fire-truck, with its emergency lights dancing above it. An elderly man with greying hair climbed out of the driver’s seat and, clutching his side with one hand, tossed two packets to Junpei with the other.

“Don’t worry, Junpei,” the man called across the distance, “We’re both clean.”

Junpei knelt down and looked at the packets. They were both Radical-6 testing kits. They had both been legitimately used, and both declared their user healthy. Junpei stood up again and shouted back, “Okay! Wait… How do you know my name?! Who are you?”

Junpei looked again at the elderly man. This time, he saw the patches of blond poking through the white. He saw the red of a roughly-healed scar on the back of the man’s right hand. And he saw the determination to help people that blazed still in the man’s eyes: a determination that Junpei had expected never to see again.

“Carlos?”

The old man nodded with relief. “That’s right, Junpei.” Carlos bowed his head and continued, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have come back, but I had…”

“You’re sorry?” Junpei asked, shimmers of guilt welling inside him. “Why are you sorry? Why on Earth didn’t you some back sooner?”

Carlos started to speak. “But you said…”

“You listened to what I said? Why would you do that? I’m an asshole, Carlos. A grade nine asshole. Please don’t listen to what I said before. Please stay.”

Carlos sighed mournfully. “It’s… I think it’s too late for that. I’m old now. And… I think I’m dying.” Carlos lifted his shirt to reveal an oozing wound on the side of his stomach. “I don’t believe I made it this far. We’re close, aren’t we? Please tell me I at least got close.”

Junpei pointed back towards the hill he had come down. “Yeah… It’s just over there.” Then, he turned back to Carlos, hands shaking angrily. “Is that it, Carlos?! You finally some back, just to tell me you’re dying? Really?!”

Carlos sighed, then pointed down at the testing kits at Junpei’s feet.

“What are you…?” Then Junpei stopped. He thought. “Wait… There’s two of them. Why did you give me two of them?”

“Because of this little guy,” Carlos answered. He turned around, then reached into the fire-truck and pulled out something wrapped in a large bundle of cloth. The cries of a baby could be heard within it. “I came back here because of him. He’s my great-nephew.”

Junpei gasped. “That would mean…!”

“That’s right,” Carlos answered, “I found her. I found Maria. She woke up once the epidemic had started, and found her way to a shelter just like ours. I don’t think it was a coincidence. I… I think Akane must have helped her. That was what she was talking about, back then. She wasn’t threatening Maria at all.

“Maria survived the explosions. By the time I got there, she had found someone she liked. About a year later, they started a family. I considered, a few times, trying to convince them to come with me back here with me, but…” Carlos coughed, a weak and weary hack. “I thought you wanted me to never return.

“But from yesterday, I didn’t have a choice. Maria’s shelter was attacked by raiders. Myrmidons. Soldiers working for Free the Soul. I was the only one who escaped, and I only just made it. This is all that’s left of my family, now.”

Carlos took a few unsteady steps forward, holding the baby in his arms out towards Junpei. “Junpei, you’re the only one I could possibly trust. You have to look after him. Please, forget what I did to you; it doesn’t matter now. Just…” Carlos trailed off; he finished his sentence only by placing the boy in Junpei’s welcoming arms.

Junpei looked down. The baby had a surprising but gratifying weight. Instinctively, he tussled the locks of blond hair that spilled from the top of the blankets, then moved the blanket aside to see the boy’s face.

Looking deeply into those curious, trusting eyes, Junpei couldn’t quite think of what to say. “H-How old is he?”

Carlos smiled. “He had his first birthday last month. November 17^th.” Carlos’ eyes took on a hopeful glint. “So… Does this mean you’ll do it? Take him in; raise him once I’m gone?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. I knew you’d come through.” His burden lifted, Carlos fell back towards the sand, staying upright only by leaning against the great wheel of the fire-engine.

“Carlos!” Junpei yelled in alarm. He raced to Carlos’ side, but couldn’t lean down without disturbing the baby in his arms.

Carlos brushed him away with a weak swing of his right arm. “It’s okay, Junpei. You have someone else to look after now.”

Carlos slumped against the wheel. His eyes closed peacefully. But he still had time for four final words.

“His name is Quark.”

As he walked back towards Fire’s End, Junpei looked down at the child in his arms: at the bright and innocent smile; at the messy hair whose colour reminded Junpei so much of Carlos. Warmth refilled Junpei’s heart.

Quark looked back up at him. “Gra-pa!” the baby babbled.

“Quark,” Tenmyouji replied.