Chapter Text
Year 2016,
“That won’t bring the baby back,” she sharply said.
Mina turned to her, searching for something, comfort, anger, guidance. Anything.
But Yozora Y/n’s face offered none of it. Just the hard, weary calm of someone who had already been through this a hundred times before.
Someone who knew that shooting after the damage was done was just noise. A thing to distract yourself from helplessness.
"You made a promise,” Yozora Y/n said, her voice quiet. “That means something. But promises won't stop any kaijus. And they sure don’t bring back the dead.”
Mina’s grip on her rifle faltered. Shame and guilt and mortified eating her stomach all at once.
“I... I thought we were in time,” Mina stammered, eyes flicking downward. “The intel said it was cleared. Protocol was followed. I checked twice!"
Her voice cracked. “We did everything right… didn’t we?”
Yozora Y/n finally looked at her and her eyes, and for a moment, they softened, and Mina could see it, something bruised and buried. Something that understood.
But she quickly hide it and chided her anyway,
"They were wrong,” Yozora Y/n said quietly. Her gaze didn’t waver. “And next time you make a promise, Ashiro…”
Her voice didn’t rise, but there was weight behind it, carved from seeing so many officers with a bright start breaking sad news to the victims and zipped up body bags.
“...You make sure you’ll keep it.”
Mina flinched. She couldn’t meet Yozora’s eyes. Couldn’t look at the woman who’d just handed her the kind of truth no training manual could prepare her for
Epiphany struck Mina to her very core,
Since when did she look at her Captain with idolisation and seeing Kafka in her, and never as a Captain?
Waking up in a cold reality from romanticising is just as difficult as a drug addict trying to stay sober.
Yozora Y/n was never Hibino Kafka.
And yet Mina couldn't help synonymously uses the two. She just misses Kafka. And seeing Yozora Y/n, Mina saw Kafka in the way her Captain walked ahead, in the way she ordered the team, in the calm weight of her voice.
And Mina followed, not out of duty, but from a child's habit. A child still chasing her hero.
She missed Kafka. Missed being his vice captain in their own imaginary “division,” back when the monsters were just play pretend and she still believed promises could fix anything.
Kafka promised her that he'll catch up. And Mina hold on to it.
But this is no child's play. And seeing Akane's battered body bring her a cold, hard truth about reality.
“You’ll find more like this,” Yozora Y/n continued, stepping closer now, her boots squelching in the wet patch of carpet.
“Bodies no one claimed. Rooms we didn’t check. Doors that stayed shut too long. We tried to save everyone." Y/n's face softened a bit, took a blanket.
"Civilians forgetting in times of high stress situations. But sometimes, scavengers get there first.”
She went beside the corpse, to examine Akane. Her eyes flicked over the bite marks, the spread of decay, the pattern of how the kaiju fed.
Yozora Y/n wrapped the blanket around Akane and cradle the dead in her bossom, ignoring the smell. She’d gotten used to worse.
Because ignoring the stenchu, the grotesque details Akane had wenr through, dignity still matters, even for the dead.
“They go for soft tissue first. Organs, fat, the brain. Efficient little things. Breaking bones if they have to. That’s how they survived this long, feeding on leftovers.”
For a second, Yozora Y/n's tired eyes softened looking at Akane, tucked blanket around her shoulders. Like she was still alive and warmth to the touch.
Like the kind of softness that comes from remembering what snow felt like. Or the names she stopped learning. Or all the things the raids kept taking away.
Mina stared. The idea of something surviving like this, like it had a right to live just because it was good at eating the dead, it twisted her gut in a way she couldn’t explain.
“And the chirping?” she asked, weakly. “Why didn’t they run?”
“They didn’t see us as a threat,” Yozora Y/n simply said.
She looked at Mina, adjusting her hold and making sure Akane was covered and wrapped tightly. “And you just proved them wrong. That’s the one thing you did right.”
Mina’s legs nearly buckled beneath her.
She's always the one chasing. Looking at Kafka's back.
Her dream of becoming a soldier, of protecting people, being brave, being heroic... Had never included this. A baby’s bloated body.
“I thought I was ready,” she whispered. Looking at the swaddled Akane at her Captain's arms. Thinking how the latter doesn't even retch at the smell.
Yozora Y/n didn’t answer right away. Just watched her, the way a senior officer watches a rookie who hasn’t yet decided whether to keep going or quit.
“No one’s ready,” she said at last. “Not for this part.”
Then she turned and walked toward the exit, ducking under the crooked doorframe without looking back.
Mina wondered if Hibino Kafka would take the exam this year. She wondered if she's going to wait at the gate again to see him.
Mina wondered if what her mom's text to her about Kafka moving out and taking a job at Monster Sweeper Cleaner Inc. was permanent or not.
He hadn't answer her texts and calls recently.
Mina wondered if she's ever going to see him, and if he's even going to catch up... Mina has never been so lonely in her life until now.
Mina wondered if Kafka ever felt as helpless as she is right now failing Akane and her mother.
“You coming?” Y/n called over her shoulder.
She's always the one chasing. Looking at Kafka's back. Maybe it's time for her to walk her own path.
Mina hesitated, then followed. She didn’t feel like a hero anymore.
But maybe that was the point.
.
.
.
Years from now. When Ashiro Mina took Yozora Y/n's mantle or every night and then, she remembered how Yozora Y/n had been the one to carry Akane’s body back and not her.
She remembered the slap, the way Akane’s mother screamed and clawed at her Captain's uniform, like grief needed someone to bleed for it.
Yozora Y/n never flinched. Just stood there with a bruised cheek, hair out of place, holding what was left of the girl Mina had promised to bring home.
The senior soldiers stared at Mina like they were disappointed but not surprised. The rookies her age didn’t say anything, some looked away. One or two looked at her with pity.
That was worse.
Third Division Base, Year 2024,
Minutes passed and Y/n's breathing calmed down. But her stabbing, numbing phantom pain isn't. She subtly open and close her prosthetic in hopes her brain thought it was still the real thing to ease the pain.
Like tricking the nerves into standing down.
Funny how brain works...
It didn’t care that the limb was gone. It didn’t matter how clean the surgery was, how advanced her prosthetic. Or how the grafted skin could fool people that she hadn't lost her right arm.
Somewhere deep in her skull, something still lit up like a power line every time her arm should’ve clenched. As if her fingers were still there, curled too tight, aching and splintering under pressure that didn’t exist.
She sometimes wondered if her mind would ever catch up to her body, or if some part of her would always be reaching for something already lost.
Yozora Y/n exhaled when Okonogi Konomi raised her voice as she contacted Hoshina Soshiro through the comms,
Clumsily adjusting her rounded eyeglasses, she reported, "Im detecting an abnormal high energy emission near the Honju's location!"
That caught her attention, and so is Hoshina. The comms were on full volume; everyone on the field could hear it.
"What didja say?! Do ya have a visual?" Hoshina's voice snapped over the line, sharp and urgent. Hand on his earpiece and running as fast as he and Ashiro Mina could, four recon drones ahead of them.
Yozora Y/n narrowed her eyes. Of course it wasn’t over. It never ended clean. she thought.
And the moment they thought they had control was always the moment they lost it. She will personally report this to Shinomiya Isao.
Remembering their previous meeting about how Kaiju emergence is no joke this year.
Okonogi paused, looking at Yozora Y/n, clearly who had asked that very same question once before but with Kikoru. "We've been unable to get visual confirmation due to dust and clouds and network problems..."
Something in the way she said it; the static, the vague silence on the feed hit too close. Y/n's breathing hitched for half a second.
Her jaw clenched hard and Y/n tried to swallow her saliva. Her eyes strained against the visual feed, trying to see what wasn't there.
Her prosthetic hand twitched on reflex. Another Kaiju? And Kikoru was alone there. Y/n locked her eyes to her profile again and stomp her right boot nervously.
What's wrong with the technology? What's wrong with Hoshina and Ashiro's speed? They should've been there ages ago!
She should've go with them...
... Fuck.
Her vision tunneled. Ears rang.
2014. 200 Defense Force Officers dead. 3 Division Captains dead. Hikari's last breath. Huge catastrophy. So many dead civilians.
Multiple Divisions across Japan on joint operation to take down Kaiju no. 6. She could still felt the ice thawing her skin that day.
Shinomiya Isao wouldn't let go of Hikari's dead body.
Kikoru crying at the funeral.
She could smell it. The acrid smell of burning concrete, the iron tang of blood, like she’d been transported to year 2014. Like Hikari was still out there, her voice still silent on the comms.
Like how the ice locking her throat even miles away from Kaiju no. 6. The barrel of her sniper rifle was frozen.
The floor beneath her vanished. The command operational room noise faded. She was back in the smoke again, Defense Force Officers' guns half raised, back in the ice covered building and frozen comrades.
No.
Not again.
Her left hand clenched. Her phantom arms and fingers curled inside her prosthetic like she still had them, sharp and stabbing, real enough to shake her.
She forced a slow breath, grounding herself. Cold sweat crawled at the back of her neck, but she wiped it with the edge of her uniform jacket like it didn’t matter. Like she hadn’t just slipped.
A blink, and she was back in the present.
This isn't Hikari. This is Kikoru. Yozora Y/n reminds herself. She locked her jaw tight. Scowling. Get yourself together, damn it.
Okonogi leaned forward, snapping her out of it. “Hold on…”
“…What is this reading? Fortitude… 9.8?!”
What Yozora Y/n froze.
Before she could even process it, Hoshina’s voice blared over the comms.
"Are ya nuts? That last jolt must've thrown the calculation device into a whack." he barked, too quick. His gut whispered otherwise, but he shoved that instinct down.
Okonogi Konomi, gulped, hesitated under pressure. And the rhythmic clacking fingers against the other Operational Leaders are helping.
"Y-yes, that must be it, Vice Captain!"
Cuz, if it isn't an error, this would be... Hoshina Soshiro thought, hot on trails behind Ashiro Mina who was holding a rifle, they're near now but so far at the same time,
Yozora Y/n slowly reached her left hand behind Okonogi's chair and braced herself for support, the younger woman didn't noticed it.
Her hand trembled.
... Would go down to history books, as one of the kaijus to ever exist, a Daikaiju.
9.8
9.8
9.8
Same fortitude level as the Daikaiju she faced at Fujisawa City. The one she had to kill by ripping off her own arm just to fire the shot that stopped it.
The Daikaiju wasnt alone terrorising the city, a Honju was also there, it was rare but not uncommon either. Both kaijus were fighting for territory, with the Third Division killing the Yojus first.
Mina was supposed to handle the Daikaiju, and so is Yozora Y/n with the Honju, but as always, things always goes south.
She blinked at the blurry live feed, heart ticking faster, the back of her neck prickling. Static, cloudy skies… it felt too familiar.
Too much like before.
Fujisawa City. Year 2017. Right arm torn. Blood everywhere. Mina trying to reach her via comms. Her shooting the last shot.
"You're not going back to the front."
She swallowed hard. The lights in the Third's command operational center felt colder all of a sudden, like something just stepped into the room behind her.
Yozora Y/n blinked hard. Gripping tightly at Okonogi's chair. She said something. About the trainees? About Kikoru? She didn't know.
The numbing pain started again.
A dull, invisible throb deep in her shoulder and it traveled down an arm that no longer existed.
She didn’t breathe. Not right away. She clenched her prosthetic arm. It didn't do a thing.
She exhaled. Cursing, Y/n frowned. It always came back when it mattered most.
Yozora Y/n flexed the fingers of her left hand, steady against the chair behind Okonogi. Her right or the stump where it ended twitched beneath under her uniform.
The pain buzzed, slow and cruel like a signal waking up from sleep.
She swallowed.
9.8.
The number pulsed like a heartbeat behind her eyes.
Static filled the screen. The live feed struggled against cloud cover, wind, interference, the sky was like it had eight years ago, at Fujisawa.
The pain deepened. What started as a throb grew sharper, a phantom stab, like splinters or nails pushing through the flesh of an arm that wasn’t there.
She swore she could feel the nerves misfiring, trying to "grab" something, the sniper rifle, the trigger; trying to repeat what she did back then.
Like her body remembered what her mind had spent years trying to forget.
She heard the ringing in her ears again. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Shinomiya Hikari. Staring at her.
Her breathing was uneven again. Go away.
Inhale.
She's still there. Just staring at Y/n.
Exhale.
Go. Stop bothering me. You're dead, Hikari-san...
But Shinomiya Hikari wouldn't. Y/n wanted to cry. She can't breath. She can't feel the light weight of her prosthetic anymore. Even her left, real hand gripping at the silicone mattress of Okonogi's chair.
Shinomiya Hikari open her mouth. Blood dripping from her mouth in the process.
Yozora Y/n's right arm gripping tightly on her sniper rifle. Next it was on the ground. She can't breath. Mina's voice was loud and desperately calling her through the earpiece,
She cant breath, her left arm is shaking now. Surprisingly, Okonogi didn't seems to noticed.
Mina screamed her name again. Blood dripping from her right shoulder. The Daikaiju was down. Mina did a good job.
Inhale.
"Captain!"
Exhale.
"Captain Yozora!"
Inhale.
The ice would be the death of her. Half of her officers from her Division were already dead from Hypothermia. Yozora Y/n wondered if Kaiju no. 6 would kill them all. 2014.
Exhale.
Shinomiya Hikari was still standing in the corner. Her dull, dead eyes were staring at Y/n, she's saying something.
"Y/n..."
Inhale.
"CCO...? Chief Yozora, Ma'am?" Okonogi Konomi's voice snapped her back from reality.
A blink, and she was back in the present. She exhaled louder than she prefer. She looked at the far corner and Hikari was gone.
"... Chief Yozora?" Okonogi prompted again, this time, two or three Operational Leaders were now looking at Yozora Y/n with concern.
She blinked, and let go of her left hand on Okonogi's chair. Squaring her shoulders, she asked,
"Status?" Sweat still visible on her forehead.
Just one more second.
Just one more and then she'd be out of their way.
She shouldn't have come here. Not today. Not while the numbers were too familiar, and the air too cold.
Yozora Y/n clenched her skin grafted prosthetic hand behind her back. Metal digits grinding softly against each other, joints clicking.
She held it tight, trying to ground herself with pressure, but it only made things worse. She curled the prosthetic fingers tighter, until her shoulder throbbed.
Still there. Still screaming inside her nerves like the day she lost it.
“...fuck,” she muttered under her breath.
"It seems everything was alright, CCO. Shinomiya Hikari was with Hibino Kafka and Ichikawa Reno." Okonogi said, relief laced in her voice but frowned when the Chief of Command Operation quickly went outside.
"... Chief?!"
Yozora Y/n ignored her.
She headed straight for the bathroom, legs moving on instinct, muscle memory driving her faster than her mind could. She couldn’t hold it together any longer.
Every salute thrown her way went unanswered, every officer she passed blurred into nothing.
Going left, stripping off her uniform jacket mid step, barely making it past the door. The black tank top clung to her sweat-slicked skin. She let the coat drop , crumpled fabric hitting the tile.
She didn’t care. Not now. Not when it felt like she was splitting apart from the inside...
Hoshina Soshiro should’ve gone with Ashiro Mina to escort Shinomiya Kikoru to the med bay. But something, an itch in the back of his mind, a gut pull, made him turn back.
He was glad he did.
The moment he stepped into Third Division’s Command Operations Center, he spotted Okonogi Konomi pacing in tight circles, hands wringing at her side, eyes wide.
“It’s Chief Yozora, Vice Captain…” she said, her voice low and uneven. Her usual composure cracked around the edges.
Worry was written all over her face, her blue eyes darting between the monitors and the door Yozora Y/n had just left through.
“I think something triggered her.”
That was all he needed.
Hoshina didn’t wait for her to say more he was already moving. His boots echoed down the hall, faster, faster. From the far end of the corridor, he spotted it; a discarded uniform jacket slumped against the wall.
He picked it up.
The scent hit him instantly, faint cologne, sharper from sweat, and something else he couldn’t name.
Familiar. Intimate. A scent of her that lingered from when he stood rather closer next to her, shoulder to shoulder in command room.
Water running.
His eyes snapped toward the bathroom door.
He stepped closer. Paused.
“Chief…?” he called out, quiet but clear.
No answer.
He hesitated, jaw tight. It was the women’s restroom. A line. One he’d never crossed.
But he heard a clatter. A sharp metallic noise against tile. His voice rose, firmer now, soft but unmistakably worried.
“Y/n?”
It slipped out before he could stop himself. Her name, bare and personal, no titles, no formality.
It had been a while since he called her that.
Too long. Still no answer.
His hand hovered near the door. Breathing shallow. Muscles tense. Another second, and he might just kick it open.
“…I’m comin' in,” he said, voice steady.
From the other side of the door came a single, muffled word, “Don’t", it was a plea, raw and terrified, crumbling under the weight of something unspeakable.
And still, he opened the door anyway.
The lights are too bright.
Y/n was hunched against the sink in the far wall, just in front of the mirror. Her grafted skin prosthetic right arm lies beside her boots,
She’s not breathing right. She can’t breathe right. Her lungs keep forgetting how. One hand clawed around the sink’s edge, like she wants to tear the memory out.
Y/n could feel her stump was pulsing from the pain where the prosthetic was yanked off. The pain is immediate. Physical. But it doesn’t bring her back.
She doesn’t look at him. "You shouldn’t be here,” she says, voice low. Brittle. Cracked. “Hoshina, i said,”
Then her head turns. Her eyes meet his.
It wasn't Hoshina standing before her eyes. It was the Honju from Fujisawa.
Snatched back through time like a rubber band snapping. Her pupils blow wide. Breath hitching, rapid, shallow. Her chest rises like she’s drowning.
Because she is.
To Y/n, it’s not tile under her anymore.
It’s mud.
The mirror doesn’t show a bathroom. It shows smoke. Fire. Flashes of emergency lights. A Honju near her. Her right arm gone.
Shadow eats the skyline and in it, she sees him. The same posture. Same stillness. Same unreadable gaze.
Y/n doesn't see Hoshina Soshiro anymore. She sees the thing that made her took her arm.
Her voice cracked, "N...not... Not again!... I said get out!" The words tear out of her throat in raw panic.
And she throws the arm that was beside her boots before.
It crashes across the tiles with a sharp metallic shriek. A sharp echo. Like a scream made of steel.
The arm skids, then stops hard wedged against the toe of his boots. Hoshina doesn't move. He doesn't move because he knows.
The posture. The pupils. The way her breath stutters like it’s caught in barbed wire. This is a flashback, full blown dissociation.
He’s seen it before; in the eyes of Defense Officers who survived what no one should have. Some never came back from it. Others didn’t know how to ask for help.
But Yozora Y/n? She’s fighting something he can’t see. And right now, he’s the thing she’s fighting.
And right now, he did only what he can think of that would help her come back. Carefully, he put her jacket uniform on top of the sink,
Hoshina sinks slowly to one knee, boots grounded to the tile like he’s lowering himself into a minefield.
Because one wrong twitch might snap the thread she’s clinging to.
And he can't afford to see that.
"Y/n." He says, quiet but firm. His eyes were open, red maroon eyes were shown for her to see.
"It's not Fujisawa. Yer not bleedin' out." No reaction, she's not back yet. Frowning, ignoring what his heart trying to clench, and ignoring the why,
He try again, "Im not the one who took yer arm."
"It's just me,"
At first, nothing changes.
She just stares through him; eyes glassy, locked on a version of him that isn’t real. Her mouth opens like she might say something, but no words come.
Just air. Sharp, choking air. Her lungs still don’t know where they are.
Then Hoshina Soshiro heard a breath that sounds more like a gasp.
Her vision flickers. A second of white tile bleeds through the haze. Then it’s gone again. Then back. Then gone.
The city keeps pulling her down.
But something in Hoshina’s voice, his stillness, the not reaching cuts through the panic, like a slow stitch pulling her mind back to her body.
Her shoulder burns. Her heartbeat pounds. Everything feels wrong.
Her legs give first. Like she’s too heavy for her own bones. She slides down the wall, her back scraping the tile, her breathing still ragged.
The edge of the sink leaves a bruise across her palm as she lets go.
Y/n hits the floor on one knee, then the other, then finally sits, spine curled, head down, her remaining hand bracing the ground like she might fall again if she doesn’t hold on.
Her eyes dart once to the mirror, then to the floor, then to him. There’s no recognition in them yet. But there’s less terror now. Less of the city. Less of 2017.
She’s back in the room, but not fully.
Her body’s here. Her mind is still catching up. Her shoulder throbs.
Hoshina rises finally and slowly, like a man trying not to wake a landmine. He reaches down and retrieves the prosthetic, and sets it gently beside her.
Gently, he lowers himself to the floor beside her. Not close enough to crowd, just close enough to be there.
Yozora Y/n finally turns her head, barely. Stiff and reluctant, but enough to glare. Her cheeks are flushed beneath the dried tear tracks, and her mouth is set tight with embarrassment.
She’s not angry at Hoshina Soshiro just furious that he saw it. That he was here to see it. That she let everything to be seen at all.
But Hoshina doesn’t say a word.
If silence means she gets to keep her pride, he’ll take it. If it means she’s okay now, even just for a minute, then he can sit in this silence forever.
“Stop trying to fix it.” Her voice is low, brittle at the edges.
“I’m not,” he replies evenly.
“You’re sitting on a bathroom floor.”
“So are ya.”
The silence that follows stretches. Like both of them are waiting to see what shape the air will take next.
“…She looked just like her.”
Hoshina’s brow furrows, but only for a moment. Yozora Y/n has always been proud, even as a child, tight lipped and iron-backed. For her to even say that much is like opening a vault with shaking hands.
So he waits.
Her voice wavers next. Thin. Cracked. fragile, "The way she was laid out on that slab. The blood in her hair. The...”
A dry, guttural sound catches in her throat. She presses her closed fist against her sternum, fingers curled into her own ribs like she’s trying to steady her own heartbeat.
“I couldn’t breathe.”
A pause. Then quieter; “And then it’s like I was back there. 2017. I thought I buried it. I thought I...”
The rest breaks apart into nothing. She doesn’t finish.
He slips off his uniform jacket without a word and carefully folds it before placing it between her shoulder and the cold wall, offering warmth without contact.
A barrier that says I'm here without asking her to accept it.
She stills.
Blinks.
But doesn’t say anything. Just lets the jacket stay there. She let her left arm clutch the zipper,
He doesn’t look at her when he says it, “I also washed the blood off my hands in a bathroom, y’know?”
She glances sideways at him, slow and skeptical. “You’re not about to say something cheesy, are you?”
“Nah,” he says with a shrug. “Figured ya'd throw this at me.” looking down at her prosthetic arm. It was so realistic and light than he imagined.
Her head tips back against the tile wall. Exhausted. Raw.
The quiet stretches again.
But this time, it lingers warm. Settling in the corners of the room, not so much heavy as still.
And then, because Hoshina doesn’t know when to quit, he tilts his head and says, voice maddeningly casual, “...But hey. If ya need a hand, I’m right here.”
A beat.
She blinks, once. Slow. Processing.
Then her eyes drop to the prosthetic lying between them.
And back to him.
And without a word, she lifts her left hand and smacks him in the chest. Just enough to make a sound. The slap echoes against the tiles like punctuation.
He wheezes, caught more off guard than hurt. "Ow! damn, okay, still got the right hook, I see”
“You ruined it,” she mutters, half mortified, half exasperated.
“Ya were cryin',” he shoots back, grinning just enough to show he means well.
“I wasn’t.”
“Ya were,” he says. “And ya almost laughed. That’s a win.”
She glares at him. Genuinely, this time. But it lacks bite. Hoshina laughed, saying something how cute she was when she's angry. She doesn’t shove him away.
She doesn’t leave, either.
Her left hand lingers on the tile, fingertips splayed in the quiet. His hand rests beside hers, not quite reaching…
... until his pinky brushes against hers. A small thing.
Meanwhile Yozora Y/n tells herself she shouldn’t have come. She repeats it. But that fragile point of contact stays. And somewhere, she realizes; Hoshina Soshiro’s hand is warm.